Taking Flight
by SilentWillow920
Summary: There's something about the gundam boys, most who have met them tend to ponder, and rightly so. Yet when one among them begins to act strangely, can their trust be maintained long enough to uncover the deadly underlying secret?
1. Prologue: Absilo

Prologue - Absilo

Scarlet lights flashed rhythmically, casting their crimson glare and glancing off the polished chrome and steel of a dark and windowless hallway. Alarms blared, summoning hundreds of armed men from their solitary sanctuaries: the hundreds of oval doorways lining the spotless pathway. The sirens lured them inexorably forward like the mythical sea nymphs they were so ironically named after.

The torrent of men passed quickly, leaving the stainless steel hallway as unblemished as before; unblemished, perhaps, save for the vermilion liquid routinely spilt there so often, and ironic for that color being the only one currently visible down the now empty passage.

Outside the maze like complex, the British sun shone beautifully over the verdant isles, a rare sight considering the usually overcast sky. From the complex's exterior, what one could see of the structure didn't seem like its interior should be coated with chrome at all. In fact, the only remotely military defense the castle-like building sported was a 12-foot tall, stylized stone wall serving as a beautifully crafted defensive battlement. The lofty spires of the majestic palace sloped upward in exaggerated concave cones as if some aspiring artist had painted a castle directly from a fairytale, exaggerating her strokes until the towering spikes barely bordered on physical possibility.

Yet all the grandeur of its outer shell could not soften the bite of the steel blade within: the cold, indiscriminate, metallic truth that was SyeniCo castle's darkest, most closely guarded secret. It was a secret that one frantic escapee was desperate to see to freedom.

Armed guards rushed to and fro along the beautiful flagstone pathways of the lush garden between the outer wall and the castle's hewn marble. They searched among the bright flowers of every bed and within the trimmed, emerald branches of every bush, but to no avail. The desperate escapee they sought was plainly not among petal or bramble.

One ebony-clad guard man chanced to look up and caught the disappearing foot of a brightly illuminated figure fleeing over the stone wall. He gave a shout and a score of men nigh-instantly appeared with ladders and climbed to the top of the stone battlement.

From both sides, men in black uniforms closed in on the frightened figure of the fleeing woman. She appeared to be no older than her late 30's, yet the fearful expression on her face contorted it, making her look like a lady of her late sixties. She was dressed in ripped, nearly shredded garments that might have been white at one time, but now were splattered and drenched with dark brown, yellow, and grass-green blotches. The woman clutched an egg-shaped bundle of cloth to her bosom, holding on for dear life.

Would they kill her? The woman knew that no other escapees were allowed to live after they were captured; their deaths were publicly announced to discourage further attempts. Then again, she remembered, her execution would have been carried out this very day, regardless of her cooperation. It was for the bundle in her arms that she had made so desperate an escape. Though she could do nothing for the two others she bore in this hellish subterranean prison of steel walls, ceilings, and floors, she could at least try to send her second child into a different life. Any life would be better than one spent enduring the horrors of SyeniCo castle.

Guards continued to approach from both sides, slowly now as if already guessing her next move. A long time had passed since this woman had tasted fresh air, and she now inhaled it deeply, readying herself for that presumed move.

She arched her back, closing her eyes and holding her breath. Two three-inch, gleaming white claws pierced through the exposed flesh on either side of her spine, letting thin trickles of blood momentarily slide down from the claws' position near the top of her shoulder blades before the bleeding abruptly stopped. She felt no pain (save an uncomfortable shift in pressure) as the claws began to slide downwards, drawing twin red slits from her shoulders to the top of her hindside. This completed, the woman rolled her shoulders while flexing some strange muscles, and a pair of huge, feathery wings were released backward in a flash of black and white feathers.

Her wings were horribly out of shape. Half of the feathers were broken or missing and her once gloriously rippling muscles and strong tendons were wan from malnutrition. The black rim of feathers that covered the broad bones and area around the top wing joint weren't nearly as clear as they once had been, and the white of the surrounding feathers was marred by a sickening shade of gray. In this state, she might barely manage a glide or a painful, shaky flight across the plains, but that sounded much better at the moment than jumping blindly from the wall.

Clutching tightly to the bundle in her arms, the woman leaped and caught the air. She flapped several times to gain speed even as her ears were met with scores of gunshots aimed at her. Why hadn't they shot at first then? Of course, the lord of these vast acres would have much preferred her death to be at his own hands. She spat to his memory.

A sharp pain bit her right shoulder, causing her to shudder and lose precious altitude before being able to right herself just before she would have tumbled headfirst onto the grass. She flapped hard to rise and gain speed, biting her lip from the pain of her injury. The trees were only a few short seconds away; she needed only to fly until she reached their safety and cover. Only in the thickets and brambles could she give her wings a rest and instead rely on her legs.

Again, the biting pain of a bullet sliced to the forefront of her mind, and it was several moments before it registered which piece of her was so ailing. Yet in those brief moments it took her to discover she had been grazed along her side, she found herself rolling roughly across the ankle-high grass, wheeling between the clawing branches of several bushes and striking the bare trunk of a large oak upside down. Seconds later the woman stood shakily on her feet and was fleeing through the trees, the terrors she was running from serving as her greatest encouragement.

She knew not how long she ran in that red haze, unable to judge the exhaustion which plagued her limbs, or the rawness of her bare feet as one burning pain gave way and blurred into another. Several times a booming _thrum, thrum_ passed overhead accompanying a flying machine, or a hoarse rattle to one side or another warned her to turn away from her current direction of travel, it being too close to the road and certain recapture. A few times she heard the shouts of men rising and falling behind her as she pressed on, gasping for want of air, but wouldn't have stopped even if both her legs had broken.

Was it minutes or hours that passed her by as she ran? She couldn't guess. All the woman knew was that before she realized what happened, there were no more trees to run under. A long stretch of concrete-floored area lay before her, upon which stood hundreds of flying machines; airplanes, she thought she had overheard them being called. Yes, these would help. What's more, a few were standing upright, nose pointed to the sky. Rockets or shuttles these were called, and they were heading to the human colonies in space.

Space… that would be her child's home. If she left him on Earth, he would certainly be found, as would she.

The woman never stopped running. Even as she thought these things, her feet carried her ever forward, wings folded behind her. She ran directly for one of the ships headed for space, a large cargo ship. It took her only a few seconds to reach it, then a minute or more to climb the stairs to the cargo entrance. Safely inside, she hid herself among the electromagnetically secured crates. The writing upon them was alien to her; it was human speech.

Each breath was thunder in her ears, each beat of her heart was a roar, yet as fatigue finally caught up with her and filled her benumbed limbs with fire, she did not drop her watch for a moment. Every creak of metal sent a gasp through her parted, sherry lips, whitening her flushed cheeks and sweat soaked brow. She set to work almost immediately, scouring her hiding place for a crevice to store her precious bundle in. One entered her peripheral vision, and she quickly stuffed the dirty cloth into it, squeezing it through into a larger, sheltered space beyond. Air left her lungs in a sigh both of relief and grief that the bundle had left her sheltering grasp, yet those arms of hers posed more danger now to the child than he could possibly discover alone. 

Of course, she knew that she wasn't yet safe. They could still find her, find her and take her back, but they knew she was cunning. Being one formerly of so high a position among her race, she wasn't one to be taken lightly. They would expect her to hide the bundle elsewhere, probably back in the woods. They might even still be searching there, which would buy her some much-needed time, perhaps even enough for the ship to leave for space. She could hope, she could always hope.

Her breath caught in her throat as she heard the familiar, faint sound of shoes on metal. Had they found her… or was it some other human? She ducked, hoping to cover as much of herself as possible. Two steps, three steps, and the sound kept growing nearer. Four, five, six…. They passed the doorway and continued on. The woman expelled air in a sigh of relief.

All too soon, she was forced to inhale that air again in a sharp gasp. Voices resounded off the metallic walls in alarm as quickened footsteps turned back to her door and entered. She cowered, shielding her face even as she hid among the crates. The smell of fear and blood, of her fear and blood, hung heavily in the chilly, stale air.

"Over here!" a black-suited man in sunglasses yelled out the doorway. The woman didn't understand the words. Soon a second almost identical man stood in the doorway as well.

"Several workers said they saw someone run in here. The trail of blood ends at this doorway as well. Check the room thoroughly." The first told his comrade.

"With all the people who saw that little stunt of the wench, the Cleanup Department is really going to have a job this time." The second continued as he began to check the crates near the doorway.

The woman was on the verge of screaming in terror as she pressed herself low to the floor, covering her mouth with chapped hands. Her breath hissed rapidly through her fingers as she frantically sought a way out of this dismal prospect.

The door was open! Maybe, just maybe she could draw these men away in a wild flight for freedom, running down the hall as fast as she could. Perhaps she could escape again and somehow search out her child in space later. She had defied her slim chance of escape before; she could do it again.

Even as fear clutched her heart, a wave of hope and resolution washed over her. She whispered as quietly as she could muster, directing her words toward the unreachable cloth bundle she hid nearby, weaving a blessing to her dormant child in a strange and ancient language:

"Na aon sai ma noki aonai, ma habi sai autoi r^r^agana."  
"Unto thee I give this most precious gift, a chance that you might live."

With a last, longing look into the darkness of the crevice, the woman leaped to her feet and, caution all but forgotten, dashed toward the metal doorway. For a few fleeting moments, her racing heartbeat was all that filled her ears as her entire will was bent toward the single goal of escape. Then, there was a shout, a scramble, and a shot rang out as she raced around the corner, the bullet ricocheting off the metallic doorframe. Perhaps one or two projectiles struck her in minor places from behind in that wild flight down the hall, but all hope ended too quickly for any pain to be realized. A man in black stepped out from a side corridor, leveled a gun at her approaching face, and fired point blank. When the bullet's shell was ejected from the barrel and a new one took his place, he lowered his aim and fired again. The woman's knees buckled, her eyes losing their focus as her lifeblood began to trickle down in slow rivulets from those two perfect shots. Even while the twin impacts of her head and knees hitting the floor echoed down the chrome and steel pathways, the man in his black suit and sunglasses placed his gun in its holster, turned, and wordlessly walked away. The silent scream that the woman's face told of in death was misleading. Those perfect, almost merciful shots ensured she felt no pain.

Sunna died instantly.

Days passed as days tend to do. Several men cleared the hallway of the bloody evidence to any occurrence that had taken place. Witnesses were assured that what they had seen was an animal of one sort or another that escaped from a local zoo, but the news never ran the story. Launch of the shuttle remained on schedule, occurring only hours after the incident, the lingering crates remaining unchecked.

SyeniCo sorely missed the bundle their escapee carried out, but they were late by more than half a day and wouldn't have caught up even if they had followed the shuttle directly upon realization of this fact instead of searching the entire complex and forest first. 

Landing on a colony in space, the shuttle unloaded its parcels like on any other day; the same companies loaded their goods, the same customers bought surplus and the same poor children stole a nut or bolt where they could.

Stooping over a nondescript crate and peering into a promising crevice, one such talented young man happened upon a shard of what he believed to be plastic or porcelain. Fitting several small bits together, he commented lowly about how great technology must be to replicate egg shells using only petroleum byproducts and whatever other rancid chemicals modern industries came up with.

A gentle cough and a dainty cry from behind the crate startled the young man, his long, curly, golden locks flying into disarray around his surprised, and normally gamine face. Quickly checking that he hadn't been spotted by the supervisors yet, he pushed the crate aside with a grunt and found…

A child. There was a bright-eyed, softly mewling baby boy tangled in a dingy blanket on the floor and no one else around. Catching sight of the young man, the baby stopped whining and blinked his impossibly large, dark indigo eyes. Both parties were silent. A moment later, the baby coughed and sneezed, coating his lower face with mucus. The young man laughed and reached for the child's blanket, using the cleanest spot he could find to wipe the baby's face.

"You're a cute one, kid." The young man mused out loud. "And you're all alone too."

The child blew bubbles with his saliva.

"How long have you been behind there? Geeze. Who left you?" he mumbled, reaching down to lift the infant. "Well, up we go!"

The child squealed and giggled. "Go! Go! Bpbpbpbbb…. Ba!"

The young man smiled and laughed, turning to walk out the door. "You and me are going to be pals, I can tell." The infant burped in his older companion's arms. "I guess introductions will have to wait until you can speak. Don't worry, kid, I'll take care of you."

The infant giggled and put a piece of the young man's hair in his mouth.

He laughed. "Let's get you something better to eat, then…."

[End Prologue]

Random Latin:  
absilio: (v[3]) rush/fly away (from); burst/fly apart

Random Dragyrnen:  
Na: (pronoun) I  
aon: (verb) to give (present tense)  
sai: (pronoun) you  
ma: (adjective) one  
noki: (adjective) precious, with a very extreme connotation  
aonai: (noun) gift  
habi: (noun) chance  
autoi: (adverb) may, to be possible  
r^r^agana: (verb) to live (future tense)

r^r^: pronounced like a trilled purr.  
R^R^: Whereas its capitalized version is pronounced like a trilled growl.


	2. Chapter 1: Duo's Terrible Injury &AND& C...

Chapter 01 - Duo's Terrible Injury

"Was that out of character or what?"

***

"Are we there yet?" a certain braided wonder boy asked for the umpteenth time in five minutes.

"Maxwell, if I have to hear you ask that question one more time-" the arrogant Chinese man sitting across from him in the van threatened before being interrupted by a cold glare from the owner of a mop of dark brown, unruly hair and a pair of deep blue eyes.

"Would you keep it down back there?" he requested sternly from the passenger seat up front.

Another teen-with bright emerald eyes and a large amount of hair brushed over one eye-silently drove the vehicle.

The owner of brilliant sea foam eyes and golden hair sighed from his seat next to the tempered Asian and across from the jovial American. The braided American's name was Duo, and the others in respect to their appearance were named Wufei, Heero, Trowa, and Quatre.

Duo sighed and leaned back as best he could on the uncomfortable, hard bench that he sat on. "Alright, whatever. Just trying to have a little fun." Wufei was on the verge of firing a seething remark in Duo's direction, but decided wisely against it after catching Heero Yuy's death glare in the rear view mirror.

Quatre looked away from the scene, however entertaining it was on their excruciatingly long drive. He could understand why Duo Maxwell would be so antsy after so many uneventful hours on the road, even to the point of his shifting constantly in the seat. Squirming into a new position, Duo finally drew another remark from Wufei. "Just pick one spot, Maxwell, and sit in it. It's not that difficult."

"I can't help it, Wu-man! This is really uncomfortable." Duo whined. 

Wufei scoffed at the prospect while the ever-sympathetic Quatre sighed again. "Please, let's just put up with this until our rendezvous with Howard at the place he found for our Gundams. It's a miracle we're all still here in one piece after our last mission, so can we focus on that instead of these minor annoyances?" He begged the others.

"Speaking of our last mission, what is wrong with you lately, Maxwell? Even with the obvious repairs your Gundam needs, your fights have been inexcusably weak. They're sloppy; we've had to save you from more near disasters than you've caused in the kitchen since I've met you!" Wufei yelled angrily.

For once, no witty comeback was flung at the irate China man. Instead Duo replied quietly, "Don't bring it up. I don't know what the problem is, and these seats are really uncomfortable."

To three of the Gundam pilots, that series of statements was an unrelated, typical, confusing wandering of their humorous comrade's mind, but the perceptive Quatre seemed to be the only one to catch a relation. He looked toward his friend questioningly, but found Duo's gaze unfocused and directed elsewhere.

The van slowed to a stop and Trowa shut off the engine of the old van, the smell of fuel and exhaust wafting up from it. "We're here." The quiet man told the others. Doors were opened and the boys were free to crawl out. Quick looks around plainly told them that Howard and crew were absent from the enclosure.

"It looks like we'll be doing our own Gundam repairs." Trowa concluded, checking the boarded up warehouse and finding their machines present as promised.

Duo was the only one to groan at this prospect. With his profession in both salvage and mechanics, nothing but laziness could explain his reaction for his comrades. He caught a disapproving look from all four, then lowered his head and dejectedly entered the building.

***

Later that night, Duo had been left to his Gundam's repairs in the dust-perfumed warehouse while the others went to work gathering and packing their few possessions for transport during tomorrow's mission. He sat on the cold concrete floor, tightening a bolt low on Deathscythe's outstretched leg. His repairs had taken far longer than those of the other Gundams had, but all that remained for him were some minor electrical adjustments.

Duo paused for a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow, then returned to tightening Deathscythe's bolts. His teeth were clenched in something curiously other than the concentration on his work and his face was vacant of his trademarked impish grin. The back of Duo's tee shirt was stained with reddish brown blotches of some glimmering liquid, probably one of his trade's. Several slow, soft taps on the stone floor announced Wufei's long stride approaching from one end of the huge room. Of course, the warehouse wasn't exactly spacious anymore with all five newly repaired Gundams sitting upright. In fact, the only bits of walking space left were the three-foot spaces between each wall and the legs of the Gundams. With his work, Duo blocked the way that Wufei was now walking down.

On any other day, what followed wouldn't have provoked much of a negative reaction from the lively youth. As Wufei walked past he bumped into Duo's back unintentionally, causing Duo to cringe and drop his wrench, the wrench hitting the ground with a metallic clang. He shot a scorching glare at Wufei, thinking that his Chinese comrade inflicted the spike of pain he had experienced. Wufei, who had turned to look at the sound of the falling tool, caught sight of the entire scene as it unfolded. At a loss for words for the apparent outrageousness of Duo's reaction to the brief and gentle physical contact, Wufei chose instead a common response of his own,. "Weakness, Maxwell. How did you ever become a pilot?" He turned and continued walking.

Duo clenched his teeth, angry that Wufei seemed to have done that on purpose, then without thinking he hurled his wrench though the air, aiming for the back of Wufei's head. He missed badly in the haze of his anger, the cause of which remained unexplained. The wrench skittered to a stop at the end of the makeshift hallway, drawing an additional smirk from Wufei.

As the irate Chinese teen disappeared around the corner, Duo was left alone to nurse his thinning patience. Any number of small, stacking details could be used to explain his positively un-Duo-ish mood of late, but perhaps the majority of the blame could be placed on upon the grievous amount of pain any sort of pressure inflicted on his back recently. Sure, he should see a doctor about it or at least let his teammates know (and Duo was in the habit of complaining about the most trivial things just to fill the silence), but the salvage specialist felt absolutely embarrassed over the whole ordeal. Besides, he had come to convince himself that in order for the five Gundams to triumph, there needed to be five; meaning that being out of commission with anything less than life threatening was out of the question. Duo wasn't exactly sure when this notion came to him, but when he thought about it, both Heero and Wufei had to have provoked it with their constant insistence upon living out such suicidal mantras.

Finding difficulty concentrating due to the irritation both his shirt and braid were causing, Duo removed the former and repositioned the latter, placing his wet shirt near his toolbox and his braid down his bare, war-scarred chest. He had received many of those scars while living on the streets and could identify any one of them to the day, place, time, and event. However, the majority came to him during the war, and it seemed to him that every day he discovered a new one. Searching his toolbox for the wrench he needed amongst positively 20th century tools, he suddenly remembered that he had been using the desired tool only moments before, and had thrown it across the room.

Duo groaned in frustration then massaged a temple with one hand, bracing his kneeling form with the other. He sighed, mumbling, "This really isn't turning out to be my day"

A softer, quicker stride than Wufei's approached Duo from the direction of the hallway. As the steps passed behind him, they suddenly came to a halt and Quatre's high tones called out in surprise, "By Allah, Duo! Your back!"

Duo sighed, "I never went anywhere."

"No," Quatre clarified, "your back! Duo, come with me; that needs medical attention!"

"Leave me alone, Quatre. I'm not in the mood." Duo snapped.

Quatre blinked in surprise. "Duo Duo, that really needs looking after. Please, come with me." He pleaded.

Duo stood, grasping the side of his Gundam to ease the difficulty and turned to face the cherubic youth. "Look, the only thing I'm getting up for is to go get my wrench so I can finish Deathscythe's repairs in time for tomorrow's mission. Go work on strategy or whatever it is you do when you're not bugging me." He began to walk away, drawing Quatre's startled eyes after him, and then suddenly stopped and sighed. "Sorry, Quat. I haven't been in the best of moods lately and. hey, was that out of character or what? Still, I really need to get these repairs done. Can you give me some peace?" Duo resumed his slow gait toward the discarded wrench.

Quatre toddled along behind him, trying to convince him. "Honestly now, Duo, this sort of injury could impede the mission. It's already done several times, right? You've been in pain for some time now-this wound looks pretty old-and an escort mission would be manageable without you, or even with you if you would just listen to me and get it bandaged."

Duo rolled his eyes. "Really, Quatre? I've got a stupid bruise and you're acting like it's life-threatening."

"Duo, how did you get this injury? It's covering your entire back. This will get infected if you let it go much longer. Please, Duo, just listen to me."

Stooping down to lift the wrench, Duo winced at the pressure building in his back, then sighed as he stood back up. Turning around, he found Quatre adamantly blocking his path. Duo tried to step around him, but Quatre moved into his way again, his eyebrows slanted downward. Baffled, Duo half laughed. "Hey, can I get back to work or what? Wufei just spent a fun-filled hour trying to yell over my music to get me to do it. Are you going to waste all that effort?"

Quatre exhaled lowly. "Duo, I didn't want to have to do this, but as a concerned and active member of this team, I must insist that your general health is important-despite Wufei's threats-and that you must come with me for first aide. We'll visit a hospital as soon as this mission is over."

On any other day, young Duo Maxwell would not only have agreed outright, but insisted that he be given ample medication to numb anything to do with the irksome area. Come mission's end, he'd have raced to the nearest hospital sporting young nurses and have milked the affliction for all it was worth. Young Duo Maxwell, however, had been suffering the injury long enough to be truly embarrassed about the prospect of anyone knowing, much less worrying about it. Besides, last time he checked it was just a bruise, probably from being knocked around in Deathscythe a few too many times; it was no big deal.

Duo brushed past Quatre, intent on finishing his work before midnight so he could actually get some sleep. "Quatre, don't worry. I'll be fine."

Without looking back, Duo didn't notice the pained expression on his comrade's face. He also failed to see the red stain he left on Quatre's sleeve as their shoulders brushed together. The cherubic boy opened his mouth as if to say something, but swallowed the words and turned to leave.

Duo knelt back at Deathscythe's feet. Despite the uncomfortable feeling, he put his shirt back on.

***

The moon was half a week past full and high in the night sky as Wufei and Heero sat silently in their kitchen. The steady click clack of Wufei eating a bowl of rice accompanied the similar familiar percussion of Heero's trademark laptop. A half-full pot of coffee sitting on the counter was the only clue to Trowa's former presence in the room; he had long since retired to bed, yet the soothing aroma of the lukewarm liquid still floated about the area. Sitting against opposite walls of the room, the two remaining pilots seemed not to mind the late hour of night.

Yawning and dirty, Duo walked through the eastern door, immediately breaking the rhythmic near-silence. Provoking a barely controlled expression of irritation from Wufei, Duo began to search the various cupboards for anything sweet, greasy, or salty. He discovered a lone bag of stale potato chips in a high cupboard, and with a simple, "Thank you, Howard," tore into the nearly flavorless wafers, then sat on top of the counter.

Being so intent on consuming the unhealthy contents of the bag, Duo didn't notice Quatre enter the kitchen until the slightly smaller boy dropped a large box of medical items next to him on the counter. Duo choked on a chip, recovered rather ungracefully, looked at the box, and finally looked at Quatre's uncharacteristically stern face. Trying to hold on to at least a scrap of dignity, Duo grinned and asked, "What's up, Quat?"

"If you won't listen to me, perhaps you should inspect it for yourself. Maybe then you'll do something about it." Into Duo's unwilling arms were placed a mirror, a small scissors, several rolls of gauze, a roll of medical tape, and a large tube of antibacterial pain reliever cream. Quatre crossed his arms, trying to mock the pose used by his sterner comrades when they tried to get Duo to do something. Defeated, the darker youth sighed and awkwardly climbed down off the counter, chips forgotten, and shuffled out of the kitchen through the western doorway, heading toward his small, makeshift sleeping quarters.

Wufei raised an eyebrow as he exited, but gave no more thought to "Maxwell's antics." If Heero paid any attention to Duo's much stiffer than normal pace he hid it well behind the screen of his laptop and its uninterrupted clacking keys.

***

Outside the dirty, rust stained door to Duo's room, furious shuffling, thuds, and groans of frustration could be heard coming from within. Duo stood shirtless inside in an awkward position, finally aligning the small mirror in a way that he could see the injury that had worried Quatre so much. Both of Duo's eyebrows were raised in surprise. "Holy shit No wonder Quatre was worried. Wow Since when did it get this bad?"

The sight reflected into Duo's eyes was a gruesome one. Apparently, his skin had split in a random pattern some time recently. The entire area was inflamed, slightly swollen, and bleeding slowly. It was surprising to Duo that he hadn't noticed, but he merely attributed that fact to intermittent numbness of the area. Looking closer due to sheer awe, he noticed that the abrasion in fact consisted of two mirrored wounds on either side of his spine.

The severity of the graphic image before him finally caught up with Duo and he gagged, then shuddered, putting the mirror down. "Better take care of that, then" He picked up the gauze, looked back and forth between it and the other tools, and began his struggle with them.

It happened at this time that Quatre was passing by on his way to bed. Concerned about the loud bangs and shuffles inside, he knocked tentatively on the door. "Duo? Are you alright in there?"

Muffled from inside came Duo's sneering, sarcastic reply, "Just fine, as if having scrapes the size of snow shoes running down my back counts as being fi-." He yelped suddenly and a thud of some small tool hitting the floor was heard followed by Duo's rapid cursing.

"Duo, I'm coming in." Quatre told the irritated boy.

"You're not." Duo quickly responded. "I don't need any he-" There was another yelp, thud, and more cursing.

"Duo" Quatre pleaded.

"I said I don't need help!" He dropped something else and cursed again. "It's not your problem."

Quatre took a deep breath and insisted, "You're a member of the team, Duo, and if you're not at your best, then it is my problem. You are decent, aren't you?"

Duo grumbled a "yes". "But I still don't need your-" Slice, thud. "Arg!"

The door swung open, granting Quatre a line of sight to Duo's predicament. He stood in the middle of the broom closet-sized room, gauze draped all over his body, tape tangled in his hair, holding a bleeding finger, and the pair of scissors responsible resting on the dingy floor where he had dropped them. Duo grinned sheepishly and laughed weakly, embarrassed.

Quatre just smiled a knowing smile before crossing the short expanse between them and helped the ailing boy untangle himself. "First things first, Duo. After the ointment, the gauze is wrapped around the wound, not draped over the entire body"

[End Chapter 01]

****Special Bonus****

AN: As a thank you to everyone who has reviewed so far, here is Chapter 2 as well. Enjoy. ^_^

Chapter 02 - Pride Cometh Before a Fall

"Perhaps Quatre was right"

***

The night passed with no note-worthy incidents, and morning as well as departure time soon followed. What few possessions each boy owned along with any and all portable evidence of their stay were loaded into a train of five vehicles. Each was carrying both a Gundam and one fifth of the shipment of advanced weaponry, which the boys hand intercepted on their previous mission. Their current mission was to drive (and if necessary defend) that weaponry along a difficult path to a precise location in the middle of the Sahara desert. Even under optimal conditions, the trek would take two to three days of slow crawl in the scorching desert heat. The Gundams could sprint across much faster, but a confrontation with OZ in this location would be devastating. Within their mission parameters, the pilots had received a warning pertaining to rumors of a large OZ fleet stationed somewhere in southern Egypt. No further details were given; it was only a rumor after all, and the pilots would be traveling several hundred miles southwest of the stated location, and in a small caravan of trucks no less. As Yuy had briefly put it, their chance of any sort of confrontation was only at 2%. Then again, with a 98% chance of going unnoticed, every pilot eventually wondered why J requested that all 5 Gundams be taken.

It was near the designated departure time, and Heero and Wufei were waiting outside their trucks. Trowa sat in the driver's seat of his, the third truck in the line, right behind Heero's and Quatre's. Behind Trowa's truck was Duo's, and lastly Wufei's. The three boys waited silently for the arrival of Duo and Quatre.

Soft taps of feet and louder talking announced their approach. As they came within hearing distance, the other three became privy to their conversation.

"You're sure you'll be alright?" Quatre asked for the umpteenth time. "I still don't think it's wise for you to participate in any more mission until that injury is taken care of."

"Stop worrying! I tell you, I'm fine!" Duo protested, face betraying his irritation.

Wufei smirked. "For the very fact that you are who you are, Maxwell, I've always doubted that you are all right, mentally or otherwise."

"Har, har." Duo rolled his eyes. "So are we going or what?"

After an additional protest from Quatre, the pilots climbed into the trucks and received a last-minute reminder of their mission. Once again, Quatre pleaded with Duo to stay behind.

"Quatre, you're embarrassing me. Drop it, all right? I'm fine. Let's get going before hell freezes over, ok?" Resting back into the seat, Duo winced at the pressure.

***

The first day across the desert was distressingly uneventful. They spent the night in one of the trucks, setting up just before the sun went down, and started off just as things began to heat up again. To curb Duo's request to travel instead when it was cooler, Heero calmly explained that their trucks would be much easier to spot via a thermal scan if they would travel at night. By traveling in the day, they reduced their chances of being caught. 

As the day grew increasingly hotter, moods stretched and tempers flared. Wufei began to feel edgy, temper rising with the temperature. Neither Trowa nor Heero's mood could be told by the silence over their com links, and both were as alert as always. Quatre was merely bored, perhaps tired if told by his winded tone of voice. Then again, anyone would be exhausted after talking to a bored Duo for several scorching hours straight.

Even through his chatty act, Duo's voice was hollow and windy. Sluggishness was common in such severe heat even with plenty of water and sunscreen. The air conditioning could not be run, though, because it would further stress the engines of the trucks. However, Duo's exhaustion came from another, closer source.

Quatre had changed Duo's bandages once more this morning, and it was the first time the other pilots got a good look at what ailed him. Wufei had ranted about "Maxwell's stupidity and weakness" for the subsequent hour, and even Trowa had voiced his concern. Quatre's note that the injury was worsening didn't help slow the irate Chinese man's rant, but even though Duo honestly should have been taken to a hospital following the discovery of his hastening rate of deterioration, they were already a day into the mission and hundreds of miles from civilization. Now fully aware of the danger he had willingly put himself into, Duo agreed that turning back alone would be far too risky, and taking one of the remaining four as an escort was out of the question.

As a result, the mission continued on as planned and Duo did his best to lighten the mood by ensuring that the com link never received a moment's rest. The throbbing pain he suffered from-despite the ointment, heavy bandages, and pills Quatre had forced him to take-didn't hinder his sociability or his ability to annoy the hell out of Wufei.

Late in the morning while they still drove with the sun in their eyes, Wufei finally snapped at Duo over the com, yelling at him to shut up. Surprisingly, Duo did so with little more than a grumble.

Several minutes later, Heero spoke almost silently over the com. "It's too quiet."

Wufei chortled. "Maxwell's finally shut up."

Duo stuck out his tongue in response, realizing too late that the com in the trucks only transferred voice.

"I agree." Quatre responded to Heero, ignoring Wufei. "For such a top security mission, this is certainly uneventful. We haven't seen so much as a sand storm since we started out."

As if on cue, scores of mobile suits rose from beneath the surrounding sand dunes and from the ever-shifting valleys beyond them. Several Aries suits took to the air and circled around, firing at the dunes in front and behind the trucks, causing avalanches of loose sand to trap them from all sides.

"Of all the dumb luck" Duo quipped.

Quatre's command came promptly over the com. "Quickly, everyone get going! I'll stay down on the com until you're in the air. Heero, Trowa, defend the front. Wufei and Duo, you take the rear. I'll join you when I get out. Go!"

Moments after Quatre cut the com, a rich British accent crackled over the radio. "Attention drivers. Unauthorized transport through this region is strictly prohibited. Step out of the vehicles peacefully so you may be transported. I repeat, attention drivers"

Quatre frowned as he strapped his goggles on and climbed into the back of his truck. Whatever he had been hoping to hear over the radio was obviously not said. Three telltale blasts sounded from either side of Quatre, signaling that three Gundams had taken flight. A cry of "Bloody hell!" sounded from the dashboard of his vehicle followed by the shriek of melting mechanical equipment.

There was a superstition, Quatre remembered, that anyone who met a Gundam in battle would not live to tell of it. In order to protect their mission, time and time again that conception had to become reality by his and his four friends' hands. Quatre climbed into the cockpit of his Gundam, Sandrock, started it up, opened the top of the truck and joined the battle. Soon after rising into the air, only Trowa's voice came over Quatre's Gundam's video com system.

"Quatre, I've got a problem here."

"What is it, Trowa?"

"I've been trying to reach you. The roof of my truck, it's jammed. I can't launch without serious damage to the vehicle." Trowa replied.

"Stay there!" Quatre told him, then contacted Heero. "Heero, how are you doing up there?"

A curt nod and a monotonous, "hn" told Quatre that everything was fine.

Dodging and taking fire from every side, Quatre slowly made his way towards the back of Duo and Wufei. When he arrived, he told Wufei to move closer to Heero, but guard the middle of their caravan, and then told Duo to stay in the back.

"I'd be better off guarding the left flank, Quatre! We're leaving Wufei's back open!" Duo argued.

"No, Duo. You're injured. Your defense wouldn't help Wufei more than he can help himself." Quatre swiftly responded. "Now, we have mobile dolls to take care of. A thermal scan indicates that only about three of their forces are piloted by people." Several rapid explosions sounded near Heero's battle as many machines exploded. "Check that, one mobile suit. The remainder of their forces is comprised of mobile doll Leos and Aries. We're taking heavy fire. Duo, stay close to me when we go after them. I don't want any accidents."

His scythe already glowing and several demolished mobile dolls at his feet, Duo launched toward a cluster of Leos, despite Quatre's protests, and proceeded to rip them apart. Quatre was only seconds behind and attacked the Aries dolls that were closing in behind Duo. After Duo was satisfied that the Leos were sufficiently destroyed, his cocky grin appeared on Quatre's screen. "See? I told you I'd be just fi-" A sickening, watery gasp sounded over the com system as the top half of a sparking Leo doll fired one last shot from a heap of other ruined parts. The blast connected soundly with Deathscythe's unwatched back, rocking the cockpit and slamming Duo around in the firm seat. Deathscythe hung weakly in midair as its pilot hung silently in his harness, eyes shock wide, but unable to be seen by the video com camera beneath his crown of bangs.

Wufei appeared suddenly nearby and put the offending Leo out of its misery with a powerful swipe of his glaive. "Maxwell!" he yelled angrily.

"Duo! Are you alright?" Quatre asked urgently.

Seeming not to notice, Heero continued to draw the bulk of the mobile dolls into melee at the front. He was, after all, the greatest threat to their lines.

Moments later, Duo coughed and grimaced, sitting up and taking the controls again. Hoarsely and weakly, his voice came over the com. "Yeah, I'll manage Ow, that smarts."

"Damn you, Maxwell!" Wufei roared. "Don't get yourself killed on a mere escort mission! These unskilled dolls aren't worth even your street rat perspiration!"

"Uh, thanks. I think." Duo responded.

"Duo, above you!" Quatre warned him of an incoming Aries.

He drew up his scythe and struck, searing and melting the metal body of the doll, cleaving it in two. Wufei returned to his designated post.

The mobile dolls kept on coming at them, and the confrontation stretched on for minutes, then hours. The cloven parts of dolls unlucky enough to be caught by blade or beam littered the desert sand, causing it to closer resemble a machine graveyard than the Sahara.

"Is there no end to these things?" Duo asked exasperatedly, dripping with sweat, panting, and wincing at every move.

The rest of the team was tired, and the armor of every Gundam was equally dented and worn by constant fire. Only Deathscythe's movements, however, had become jerky, shaky, and sluggish.

"Duo, fall back!" Quatre ordered. "Defend Trowa on the ground! You're in no condition to continue aerial combat!"

"He doesn't need defending! The dolls are going after us, not him! He'll become a target if I fall back! Besides, our left flank will be completely defenseless!" Duo argued, then yelled to blind himself of the pain of movement as he caught the legs of an Aries in the glowing energy of his scythe.

From the front, Heero had been listening to this argument continue for the past half-hour. Duo was right in every point he made, but regardless, the rest of the team would be able to defend him better if given the chance to surround him within the dual prison and sanctuary of sand and broken metal surrounding the trucks.

"Maxwell! That was an order!" Wufei yelled, interrupting the two boys. "Fall back now!"

Growling and glaring at Wufei's image on the screen, but too exhausted to argue with both him and Quatre, Duo finally gave in. "Fine! Whatever!" He turned and slashed a clean path to the ground.

Unfortunately, he didn't see the Aries doll behind him. Too late, Quatre yelled to warn him. The doll delivered a solid blow with the butt of its empty gun, piercing through a weak spot in Deathscythe's gundanium armor with the sheer force of the bludgeon. Something ripped; something gave way as Duo's silent, shock-stricken expression faded along with the light from his eyes.

If possible, the situation seemed far worse from the perspective of the other pilots.

"Duo!" Quatre cried.

"Maxwell!" Wufei roared.

They couldn't help, however, for even though the opposition had been significantly thinned, they were still overcome. Only Trowa's eyes were shielded from the lonely image of Duo slumped over his controls and the cockpit covered in a thick, scarlet liquid. The tragic picture flashed across the screen of each pilot as, like a marionette whose strings had been cut, Gundam Deathscythe fell lifelessly to the ground, joining the broken shells of those it had so recently preyed upon.

"Perhaps Quatre was right"

[End Chapter 2]

AN: Everything to this point has been very confusing, I'm sure. I especially had trouble deciding where to place what has become the prologue. It was originally designed to be a bit of action to get readers caught up in the story, abeit very confused, but I was seriously considering holding off and putting it as an interlude later in the story. As you can see, I often decide to go with the original plan. Unfortunately, I'm sure this has left everyone with many, many questions. Just so everyone knows, yes, the child the woman carried out was her second of three. How is this possible? All answers will be revealed in an up-and-coming chapter. This chapter will be conveniently sub-titled "After a turning point, there is no turning back." Giving the actual title this soon would give far too much away for the next chapter.

Reasons both chapters one and two are contained in this update go as follows:

1) On FanFiction.net, there is no option to post the prologue separately. Because I am such a lazy ass, I didn't feel like going back and combining chapter one and the prologue together.

2) I am quite pleased that I have received several reviews already. I would like to thank those reviewers with this little bonus. Thank you, everyone who has read this and whose endless hours of plot discussion with me have gone into the creation of this story. I am greatly indebted to you.

3) I probably won't have time to work on typing this story, let alone updating again until after the 17th of June. Why? I really need to study for final exams this time. I'm also taking my ACT test on the 14th. On the 15th, one of my uncles will be driving me out to Colorado, where I will spend the next two months helping another uncle with household duties, including babysitting his son almost 24/7 so my little cousin doesn't need to spend the entire summer in day care. 

Therefore, I leave you with this malevolent, evil cliffhanger. ^_^ Enjoy your exams!


	3. Chapter 3: Stable but Critical

Chapter 03 – Stable but Critical

_"Stupid, weak Maxwell!  Injustice!"_

//_…_// denotes thought.

***

//_"Red… Dead… Bled… I don't remember painting my room red….  I'm not in my room; my room doesn't have straps….  There are straps holding me in.  Straps… Traps… straps normally aren't uncomfortable, but now they hurt a lot.  It's too dark.  My eyes are closed.  My eyelids look red._

_"I hear drums.  Thrum, thrum…  The drums are slow and quiet.  I don't hear much else.  They don't really sound like drums… whoever is playing them is really slow.  Thrum, thrum…  Thrum, thrum…  The drums only play one rhythm.  I wish they would play something else._

_"Someone is yelling.  I think two people are, but they're hard to hear.  They sound really far away.  The drums are too loud.  Someone is yelling my name.  That's funny.  I don't think I did anything to get into trouble.  Yeah, two people are yelling.  I don't want to hear them.  Yelling doesn't sound nice.  Lights._

_"There are lights flashing.  I'm too tired to open my eyes.  I think the lights are red.  My eyelids would look yellower otherwise.  Yellower is a funny word.  It rhymes with mellower.  Purple is a color word too, but I don't think it rhymes with anything.  Schlurple._

_"No one is yelling anymore, or maybe I can't hear them.  The drums are too loud.  Loud… cloud…  Clouds look cold.  I'm cold.  I don't like the cold.  Clouds are white.   They look pretty too.  There are no clouds on the colonies.  Maybe clouds are made of marshmallows.  Maybe the moon really is made of cheese.  It looks like moldy cheese.  The dust is like mold too.  Cheese is good.  Moon is a funny word.  Mooning.  Marshmallows are white, like feathers._

_"Feathers… white… black… black… black…._

_"My eyelids look black, or maybe I can't see them.  Wufei asked me if I was blind once.  I'm cold.  The cold isn't from outside.  Wufei asked me if I was deaf too.  Maybe I am.  I can't hear drums anymore."_//

***

The cockpit of the Gundam Deathscythe opened slowly to the desert air, letting harsh, white light spill into the cockpit.  Even as the battle raged on around him, one pilot knelt down and lifted Duo's bloody, limp, unresponsive form from the tomb-like enclosure.  His head and limbs hung flaccidly, jaw slack, and his hair fell toward the ground as lifelessly as the mechanical graveyard surrounding the pilots.  The Gundam Wing Zero knelt silently nearby, mechanical eyes blindly surveying the scene.

For each pilot, the events following Duo's fall were blurry at best, some more so than others.  Minutes or hours later, Duo's body was placed on a stretcher, fresh blood staining the pale, pristine surface.  Doctors frantically yelled out orders.  "Blood transfusion," "fading fast," "ER," "surgery…"

Quatre, Trowa, and Wufei somehow ended up in the waiting room while Duo's life remained in the unknown doctors' hands.  The gentler boy was caught in wails of guilt, repeating over and over again how this was all his fault.

"Hardly." Wufei snorted, though the softer tone of his voice betrayed his worry.

In the emergency room, Duo was hooked up to scores of machines as doctors worked frantically to save him.  "He's not going to make it; he's lost too much blood" seemed to be the general opinion of the skilled group, but whatever hope kept them working was plainly not reflected in Duo's pale, slack face.

_//__"I can't hear drums anymore…"//_

***

Early one morning in a small, off-white room, buttery sunlight filtered through a pair of cream-colored curtains and cascaded across both the white tile floor and an equally clean hospital bed.  A sleeping form filled it, lying on his stomach, head facing the center of the room.  With a groan and a sigh, sleeping Duo's eyes fluttered open from their rest.

"Finally, you're awake." Came a stern feminine voice.  Duo tried to turn his head to find its source, but stopped when pain shot up and down his spine.  "Don't get up.  Your injury has only been stabilized, not healed.  We don't have access to many modern tools in this valley."  

Duo sighed again and relaxed, resting his body.  Even in a warm room in the middle of the desert, he was cold.  Duo could never seem to escape the cold.

"If you're up to it," the woman continued, "two of your friends are waiting for you outside: a blonde boy and a Chinese fellow.  I'll need to change your bandages soon, but they've been waiting quite a while."

Duo cringed as the blurred events that nearly led to his death came back to him in one gigantic, cold, mental slap in the face.  He stayed silent, giving her no answer.

"…Mr. Maxwell?"

Quietly and muffled from face down on the pillow came Duo's airy response.  "I don't want to hear it."

"Hear what?"

"If they come in…  Wu's just gonna yell.  Quatre…  I don't know, probably just stand there, tell me how I endangered everyone if he says anything…" Duo clarified though he was tired and felt as though his head was floating.

The doctor stood and walked in front of the bed, putting her covered legs in Duo's view.  She carefully placed two pills in his mouth before he could protest.  Still, he nearly gagged as he choked them down, only noticing that she was offering him water as well after they were swallowed.  "Tylenol, pain reliever," the doctor explained.  "By the time it kicks in, you'll need it."

Once again, a sigh was the only response he gave.  Duo felt lousy; the more awake he became, the more masks of his personality he retrieved from oblivion, but the lousier he felt both from physical pain and guilt.

The doctor swept several strands of brunette hair behind her ears, tucking them into her loose bun.  It was fortunate that Duo's gaze was directed elsewhere; he didn't need a reminder of Lady Une to top off his wonderful day.  "You gave the medical staff a real scare with that stunt of yours, young man." She scolded him like a mother, though without a trace of real concern or affection.  "We expected the team to arrive with injuries, but we never expected to find-"

Duo didn't have time to ask what she meant, nor did the doctor have time to finish her sentence.  The door slammed open and Wufei stormed in, rings under his eyes and anger written all over his face.  Behind him was a nurse telling him, "Sir, you can't go in there!"

The doctor dismissed the nurse, leaving Wufei to rant and yell by Duo's bedside about his weakness and stupidity.  Spit flew as Wufei's face reddened like a ripening cherry and Duo lay silently on his stomach, wincing every once in a while.  Duo was cold; he was always cold.

Quatre entered the room, bags under his eyes as well.  He approached the doctor, not needing to read her nametag.  "Doctor Arwel, I would like to thank you again for saving Duo's life.  Tell me, how is he doing?"

"His condition is stable for now," she replied.  Quatre's hopeful expression dimmed slightly at the last two words.  "But he'll need to go into surgery as soon as possible.  We should be ready for him late tonight."

"Aren't you going to wait to make sure he doesn't reject the transfusion?" Quatre asked, mildly surprised.

"No, we don't need to; your friend is very lucky.  He has a very rare blood type, but one our hospital has enough of." The doctor replied.

The way the doctor avoided details seemed strange to Quatre, but before he had a chance to respond Dr. Arwel had turned her indigo eyes toward the scene Wufei was making at Duo's bedside.

"…Is your friend always like this?" the middle-aged doctor asked.

"Duo?  No, normally we can't get him to be quiet." Quatre replied.

"No, I mean your other friend, the Chinese."

"Oh!" Quatre smiled. "Yes, that's completely normal.  I can never seem to get those two to cooperate.  Honestly, I'm somewhat angry at Duo myself."

Dr. Arwell checked her watch.  "The medication should have kicked in by now."  She walked into the ranting Wufei's line of sight, and then told him, "Sir, if you're nearly done, I need to tend to my patient now.  I'll require that you give me enough space and silence to do so."

Wufei lifted his raging gaze to Dr. Arwel's calm visage hidden behind a pair of spectacles.  His mouth opened but, catching a pleading look from Quatre, decided against telling Dr. Arwel what he thought about the strength of women.  Instead, he finished his previous rant with four words as he shoved his hands into his pockets.  "Stupid, weak, Maxwell!  Injustice!"  With that, he "hmphed" and leaned against a shadowed wall.

Despite the medication, the severe pain of Duo's injury still made him cringe.  He coughed once or twice, still trying to relax on the bed.  Doctor Arwel twisted the cap off a brown bottle whose label read "Peroxide" in large blue letters.

"Mr. Maxwell," Arwel addressed him, "I'll need your cooperation for this procedure.  It will hurt you far more than me." She gathered several basic tools and placed them at the ready in a stainless steel tray.  Even after having been explained to hours earlier about the lack of access to modern medical equipment and medicines in the valley, Quatre still had to consciously shut his mouth to keep from voicing his concern about the tactless tools Dr. Arwel had chosen.

As she began to slit Duo's bloody bandages, Quatre averted his eyes, not wishing to catch sight of the horrible wound he knew lay beneath.  Wufei looked on, eyes blank to Duo's worsening injury.  The solitary dragon had never gotten along with the one whom he called the braided baka, but a part of him pitied his comrade.  Maxwell had continued his fight despite a terrible wound that threatened his very life.  There was a morbid sort of honor in the fact that he put up with such constant pain, if not for the sake of the mission then for the sake of his four companions, whether or not they ever thanked him for it.  If Duo had died the night before, Wufei would have regretted that the last thing he told Maxwell was intended as an insult.  He vividly remembered threatening the braided menace that if he didn't wake up, the boy's ancestors would surely disown him with disgust in his weakness.  Wufei pondered the possibility that Duo might not have even heard him then.  Lost in his own thoughts, Wufei merely continued blankly watching Duo's convulsing form as slight pressure from the shifting bandages threatened to make him cry out.  His swollen, inflamed back no doubt pained him more than any war injury Wufei had ever received.  Survival of such a thing commanded a grudging sort of respect, even if the survivor did everything in the book to make such respect difficult to pay. 

The bandages completely off, Duo was given a few moments to rest, during which Dr. Arwel was sure to warn him of the next step.  "Mr. Maxwell, even with the Tylenol I gave you, this will still hurt.  We need to be sure to disinfect your wound again; there is a nasty fever running around the village and I'm sure you don't want to catch that on top of this."

Duo smirked, laughed weakly, tried to put on his trademark grin, and opened his mouth to toss a joke, but choked halfway through his breath.

//_"Pitiful, weak, Maxwell."_// Wufei thought, finally turning his gaze away.

"Don't bite your tongue off," the doctor told him tonelessly, as if irritated by Duo's childish antics.  She gave him a rubbery plastic stick.  "Bite down on this if you need to."

Neither Wufei nor Quatre needed to watch to imagine Duo's pain as the hissing peroxide flowed over their clownish comrade's back.  A muffled scream escaped Duo's clenched teeth.  It  took every ounce of his already lacking self-control to keep from thrashing around and probably causing himself more harm.  After the first dose of stinging pain faded and Duo had a short chance to rest, a second wave of peroxide was poured over the offending area.  Though it fizzed slightly less than before, the experience was no less painful.  The anguish on Quatre's face was far more apparent than on that of the Chinese, but no less sincere.

//_"Stupid, Maxwell.  You put us all in danger."_// Wufei had hated Deathscythe's pilot almost instinctively after their first meeting (though he tried to keep his opinion to himself), but he was one of the five and as necessary a part of the team as any other.  Wufei had to respect Duo's skill if nothing else.

Three times, four, five times the wave of pain washed over Duo before Dr. Arwel was satisfied and began to prepare the new bandages.

As Duo's winces began to taper off, Wufei snorted, "Stop acting like such a woman, Maxwell."  So much for respect.

Quatre glanced sadly at the Chinese man only to be met with a silencing glare.

Dr. Arwel wiped off the leftover liquid, and then carefully applied ointment with her gloved hands.  Finishing that, she stood back to assess her uncompleted work before moving to a PA speaker on the wall and holding down a large cream button.  "Beth, have any of my nurses checked out of the special care unit yet?  I need assistance in room 23."

"What for?" Quatre asked good-naturedly.

"Re-bandaging Mr. Maxwell." She quickly replied.

Wufei made an odd snorting sound that barely resembled a laugh at the word "Mr."

"Sorry, Seren'.  They're all checked in; Mia came in just a minute ago.  We have at least 30 patients in critical with that nasty burning fever, ya know." Beth replied detachedly through the electronic box.

"Alright, I'll make due, then." Dr. Arwel responded, releasing the button and returning to contemplate her next move.

"…30 patients in critical?" Quatre repeated carefully.  "With all due respect, Doctor, shouldn't you be there instead of bandaging Duo?"

Doctor Arwel replied nonchalantly, "Your friend is a type D, young man.  He'll need close surveillance from now until his surgery is over to be sure he does not slip back into the critical state.  We have him on video surveillance, but as you can see, we're quite under-handed at the moment."

"I don't understand.  What is a type D?" Quatre continued as Dr. Arwel measured bandages.

"It's a very rare blood type, almost unheard of in most parts of the world.  I happen to be the leading medical authority on the type D."  She responded immediately, sounding as though she had said this many times before.

This intrigued Duo.  He had always thought himself to have type B blood, but never needed a transfusion before and wasn't old enough to donate.  Come to think of it, young Duo Maxwell didn't even have a medical record, yet another reason why his background was difficult to trace.  Still, with 30 people in critical and himself only needing a fresh bandage, Duo wondered why the doctor would spend so much time caring for him—or not caring as the case may be.

"You won't be… running any kinds of… tests, will you?" Duo asked her with difficulty.  The other members of the room looked at him as though they had just remembered that he could speak.

"What sort of tests do you mean, Mr. Maxwell?" Dr. Arwel questioned him.

"You know," Duo clarified with a joking tone, pulling a cocky grin over his pale face and continuing as flippantly as he could muster, "like turning me into your personal lab rat or something, like trying to sew on an extra head or two more arms, something like that."

Wufei smirked.  "An extra head might do you some good, Maxwell.  At least then maybe one of them could watch your back for you."

"…Not funny, 'Fei."  Duo told him even as he let out a soft chuckle, but suddenly grimaced at another twinge of pain, then nausea.  "Urg…  Hey, doctor lady, you might want to get a bucket or something.  God, I think I'm going to be sick…"

Dr. Arwel shook her head.  "There are none to be had in the surgery wing; they're all being used in the sick rooms.  I'll get you a bag after I'm finished here." She began to cover the ugly dark welts with the pristine bandages she had prepared.

It was painful for Quatre to see his friend like this, so hurt and frail.  Even now, the emergency of the night before seemed to still be playing in the cherubic youth's mind.  Duo's life was still in danger, though Quatre far preferred the braided boy's feeble attempts at lightening the mood to the lonely image that had flashed across his Gundam's screen.  Quatre shuddered at the memory of all that blood.  He had never noticed how… red blood was before.  Red isn't a color that could possibly have been invented.  It was so vibrant, alive, even as it died….

Quatre shook his head to clear his distressing thoughts.  Where had that come from?  Such a wandering of the mind was typical of his more flippant comrade.  Even so, the danger they all had experienced the night before was still very real.  Duo's injury was only stabilized after all, and so very many things could go wrong in surgery….

The homely, buttery glow of the cream-walled room did little to soften the sickly tones of the highlighted figure on the bed.  It was hard to believe that this barely conscious boy had only hours before been their witty, happy, annoying Duo.  It was a glaring reminder of their mortality, their frailty, and that even the one among them who never seemed to frown could still break down.  The cheery sun that brightened all of the pilots' dark and dreary lives had been torn from the sky and nearly lost forever beneath the black horizon.

If Quatre judged by his icy exterior, it would seem that Wufei didn't care in the least about Duo's pain, but since Trowa had left early that morning to join Heero in repairing the Gundams (and perhaps to get a little sleep), it had been Wufei by Quatre's side in the waiting room, offering silent condolence with his motionless presence.

Truly, Wufei did care whether Duo lived or died.  More than that, Wufei cared that he was in so much pain.  He would never show this weakness of companionship to Maxwell, however.  The braided baka would just use that as yet another thing to tease him about.  Wufei grumbled out loud.

Still in the process of being bandaged, Duo suddenly seemed to remember something.  "…Hey, guys?  You remembered to pick up my stuff, right?" he asked with difficulty.  "I'm itching to get my hands back on my projects."

//_"Maxwell's projects."_// Wufei curled his upper lip and rolled his eyes as he thought.  Those electronic menaces that Maxwell called "projects" caused more damage on a regular basis than they were supposedly designed to prevent.

"They're with the rest of our cargo, Duo." Quatre replied before Wufei, already dangerously close to spouting off another rant, could edge a word in.

"Speaking of which," the doctor suddenly remembered something of importance as she finished with the last of Duo's spotless wrappings, "I'll need to see the vehicle Mr. Maxwell arrived in to accurately judge the source of his problem."

Duo couldn't help but leave his mouth agape as what she was asking sunk in, but his fellow pilots didn't seem to have a problem.  Quatre nodded before saying, "Very well, then.  An associate of yours showed us the warehouse when we arrived.  Come with me, then."  

"…Quatre, what…" Duo began with effort, but was interrupted by Wufei.

"Doctor Arwel is one of J's contacts.  Heero told us while you were incapacitated."

Relaxing back into the lumpy hospital bed as best he could, Duo sighed, "whatever," and turned his head toward the window and away from his companions.

"I'm really sorry to be leaving you like this, Duo, but Doctor Arwel made it clear earlier that the best way to discover the source of your injury is to begin where it most likely formed…" Quatre explained sincerely, but trailed off, as he received no confirming reply from Duo.  With little more (including Doctor Arwel fetching a bag for the bedridden boy) and no less, the three people exited Duo's room, leaving him to lay in silence once more.  He felt cold.

***

The engine of the jeep that Quatre, Wufei, and Doctor Arwel rode in across the oasis purred lowly as they made their slow way along the cracked concrete streets that late morning.  High, natural sandstone cliffs rose all around the populated oasis valley, and though it was several bumpy miles by road from the hospital at one end to the mostly abandoned business district at the other, the boys had yet to count more than one or two motor vehicles along the entire route.  More curious than the sparse housing and sparser population around this beautiful oasis was the peculiar behavior of the few residents they passed on the streets.  With untrusting glances directed at the pilots, most of the inhabitants skirted nervously around the slow-traveling jeep.  Though neither Quatre nor Wufei had much time to take in the settlement between arriving late the previous night and the ensuing waiting room tension, it still seemed peculiar that a place such as this could exist in the modern world.

Catching the violet gaze of another timid local, Quatre lifted the corners of his mouth to smile, but was greeted only with a disapproving, almost hateful scowl.  As he made to inquire Dr. Arwel about the collective behavior of the residents, she instead launched into a somewhat unnecessary description of the village's natural sandstone barriers.  When she came to speak about the terrible reception any communications from outside had, Wufei pulled to a stop in the gray, uninhabited district, home to numerous run down warehouses and abandoned upstart businesses.  They exited the vehicle together and walked around the side where Wufei knocked several times in rhythm.  A few moments later, Trowa answered the door, nodding as they entered.  He had a cup of coffee in one hand and bags under his eyes, but seemed no less awake than the three people he hurriedly urged through the door and into a narrow hallway.  His right hand over the handle of his gun, he looked around outside before pulling the door shut once more.

"It's good to see you, Trowa." Quatre greeted him.  "Did you get enough sleep?"

Trowa answered with a silent nod before quietly asking, "Why is she here?" indicating the doctor.

"I must see the vehicle Mr. Maxwell arrived in so that I might assess the source of his injury." Doctor Arwel replied without waiting for one of her escorts to relay her intentions.  "Only then may I determine how this can be avoided in the future."

"With all due respect, Doctor," Quatre began, "Duo only needs to tell us earlier when something is bothering him in order for us to avoid this unfortunate circumstance."

With all the air of an expert explaining quantum physics to a reluctant child, Doctor Arwel shook her head.  "If you wish to have Mr. Maxwell back among you in less than two months, I must see where he will be spending much of his… more active time.  If I am not allowed to assess this, you will have to wait until he is completely healed to prevent… complications.  At the very best, I can have him back to you in several days, but only if I can draw up a list of instructions for him to follow while not under my care."

At this, Trowa sighed reluctantly and leaned over to whisper so only Quatre would hear, "Two months is out of the question.  Quatre, Heero says our window opens in a week, stays open only three days.  He hasn't found another reasonable one yet."

Quatre's expression became troubled, "What would Duo think?  This is his information we'd be giving out.  Whether or not she's one of J's contacts, do we really have the right to be giving her information that she could sell to OZ?"

"We don't really have a choice at this point.  We need Duo back in a week in time for our next mission.  Heero can only obtain so much information through his computer.  We need Duo to sneak in and get the rest." Trowa replied.  "There is no way we can do this without Duo."

Quatre pondered this for a few moments, then sighed, defeated, and turned to Doctor Arwel and spoke in a commanding tone he normally reserved for the battlefield, "You will be allowed to view the cockpit of Duo's 'vehicle.'  While you are escorted to and from what assessments you must make, we will be armed.  Take what measurements you need and however much time you need.  Do not touch any of the controls or turn the power on.  You will not be permitted to commit any of your findings to a physical or electronic recording.  You will be monitored at all times.  Wufei will search you now and before you leave." He then paused and continued in his usual angelic tone, "Is this alright with you?"

She nodded and Wufei began his search.  He found only a small clipboard, some paper, a few writing utensils, her watch, her pager, and a small container of aspirin, all of which he confiscated.  After nodding to Quatre and Trowa to tell them he was finished, Wufei opened the door to the main area of the warehouse and held it.

All five Gundams stood upright in a line in the huge warehouse, beginning with Nataku (sparking in various places, but nothing serious), then Heavyarms (untouched), Sandrock (the most damaged, but apparently Trowa had started at the more obvious repairs), Deathscythe Hell (not as damaged as one would expect), and finally Wing Zero (on which Heero was now working).  Various tools and pieces of electronic equipment were scattered around them, though a passable path still ran from one end of the warehouse to the other.  Wufei walked past the first three Gundams swiftly, Trowa, Quatre, and Arwel in tow.  A (; a) loaded handgun was in each of the pilots' possession.  As they came within view of Heero, typing on his ever-present laptop, the monotonous boy glanced out of the corner of his eye at the approaching group.  Though it went unnoticed, he looked over the doctor with obvious dislike.  As she was directed into Duo's cockpit, the angry knot in Heero's stomach twisted once more, though he was glad that the other three pilots had enough sense to carry handguns and send Trowa up with her.

Though Quatre had initially volunteered to climb up to Deathscythe's cockpit to make sure the doctor didn't try anything, Trowa's insistence that he be the one to take her up came as an unexpected and welcome relief.  Duo's Gundam still hadn't been cleaned of all the blood he had left there, and the empathetic youth admitted to himself (if no one else) that being forced again to imagine Duo's shock at the moment that had nearly cost him his life would be an unpleasant event at the very least.  As Arwel disappeared into the dark hole in Deathscythe's front, Quatre had to curb the desire to look away, the dreadful memories of less than a day ago returning fresh to his mind and making him suddenly very aware of every fleck of red around the room.  Trowa's Gundam, a patch of rust on the wall, a label here and there, and Wufei who for some reason always reminded Quatre of the color red; all came to broadcast the lonely, agonizing image of Duo's limp form made small against a background of red.  He shuddered.

It took Arwel what seemed like an eternity to obtain the measurements she needed before the doctor exited Deathscythe's cockpit with a noticeable frown; during which time Wufei had wandered across the warehouse to busy himself with minor repairs to his Gundam, leaving Quatre without any choice but to crane his neck back for several hours.  Through Trowa scarcely moved an inch; the milder boy quickly took to rocking back and forth on his feet, slowly shifting his weight from one leg to the other.  If it weren't for his constant mental insistence that this was all for Duo's health, Quatre might have insisted that these obscure rituals be put to a halt and that they all return to Duo's side, though such an idle way of spending a perfectly good day would doubtless be met with opposition by Mr. Perfect Soldier himself, perhaps as well as the other three antisocial pilots.

With a sigh and a nod, Arwel and Trowa descended via wire from the damaged Gundam and joined Quatre before walking toward the exit.  As the (they) passed Nataku, Wufei joined them.  The door to the makeshift Gundam hangar clicked shut with a tiny swoosh of air, locking the constant clicks of Heero's laptop inside the eerily quiet room.  Wufei searched her again and upon finding nothing returned her other items.

"I want to make it clear to you," Quatre began again in that serious, battle-mode tone, "that you are not even now to record your findings to a solid source.  I hope what information you gathered will be useful, but only in the proportional gatherings we will allow you to leave with."

Arwel nodded in acknowledgement, if with a hint of contempt showing in her eyes.  "I only care for the well-being of your Mr. Maxwell and my findings will only be put to use in relation to his health."  Checking her watch, she again smoothed a benevolent look over her care-worn features and sighed.  "After three hours away from the hospital, I had better return to my patients.  They don't heal themselves…."

"I will escort you there." Wufei offered firmly, leaving no room for negotiation on the part of Doctor Arwel or his fellow pilots.

A tentative hand was placed on his shoulder, causing the stern boy to twitch reflectively before returning to his usual countenance.  "I would like to go with you," Quatre's soft tones drifted past Wufei's ears, "to see how Duo is doing."

No one needed to ask Trowa; the silent boy wordlessly offered to drive.

"Very well, visiting hours extend until 7, which is four hours from now.  He isn't scheduled for surgery until then, so you may see him off if you'd like." Arwel told them.

Of the three, only Quatre had words to go with his nod.  "Thank you, Doctor."

"None is necessary." She replied, though as the four exited the building, locking it behind them and arming the alarm, Quatre couldn't help but wonder about the lack of benevolence in her tone. 

***

Duo was becoming restless.  The afternoon was slowly and uneventfully wearing away, and the only visitor Duo had since the doctor left with Quatre and Wufei was a cranky male nurse coming in to help him go to the bathroom, which had been an unpleasant experience to say the least.  At least he had brought a pencil and paper at the braided boy's request, though the yellow notepad he had received was now completely covered with the detailed design of a small mechanical object which was intended to be yet another leap in his already revolutionary thermal weapons theories.  The new compact fuel cell would greatly enhance his Gundam's thermal energy output: an important feature, considering that the energy plane of his beam scythe had the greatest surface area of all the pilot's weapons and tended to use up large amounts of energy in extremely short periods of time.

//_"At least I've kept my mind busy… until now."_//  He admitted with mild humor.  Placing his pencil on the metal tray next to him and looking over the encoded notes on his paper, Duo wondered mutely whether or not Quatre knew where he stored the odd spare parts that he used to bring his little projects to life, and whether or not Quatre would have time to retrieve those parts, let alone be able to calculate the subtle differences between each of them.  To Duo, it had become almost second-nature and he could blindly shuffle through boxes of "junk"—as Wufei called it—and put his chosen creation together in record time all without needing to look.  Still, with only a dull pencil and a now completely full pad of old, brittle paper to entertain him, Duo's hands felt as unbearably empty as his mind felt idle.  Duo didn't like the feeling, contrary to what his demeanor commonly led people to believe.  He rubbed his hands together, trying to exercise the chill out of them

There were a few silvery coins on the tray as well, Duo suddenly noticed as his hand brushed one to produce the unmistakable sound of metal money.  Though L2 had been quite behind in the times, it was hard to find a place in the middle class and above sections of the colonies where transactions weren't handled almost exclusively with the scanning of cards linked directly to one's bank account.  This extreme liquidity of one's assets had in fact led to a majority of his home colony's deterioration as people found it easier to spend all that they had.  Real money, as it had come to be called, had become something of a novelty.  With the advanced security features of "the card" compared to the non-traceable nature of paper and metal assets, only those who dabbled in shady business trafficked largely in real money.

Suddenly aware of a salty dryness in his mouth and an intense, if unwise, craving for anything sweet, greasy, or otherwise unhealthy, Duo lifted several of the coins and counted them, then ripped a small piece of unmarked paper off the edge of one of his drawings and hastily scrawled an IOU for the amount.  Even though he knew that it probably wasn't a good idea, visions of crisp, delicious carbonated beverages seemed to call to him from down the hall.  Every hospital had soda machines, Duo believed, and the deities of dispensing were sure to smile upon the thirsty and bored.

With the notepad already dropped unceremoniously onto the floor, Duo moved his arms beneath him and slowly pushed up, expecting to be met with loud protests from his dully-aching back.  He didn't expect nearly enough.  With a soft whimper of surprise, Duo relaxed his efforts, and he vaguely wondered if perhaps the severity of his injury was still escalating despite the best efforts of, well, at least one doctor.  Then again, remembering the lack of concern in Doctor Arwel's voice he truly wondered for a moment if she was trying.  …But she was a doctor, it was her job to try, so wasn't she?

Duo shook the thoughts from his mind and raised his expectations of pain for another attempt.  Shifting all of the muscle tension in his body to his arms and legs, Duo succeeded in getting both sets of limbs beneath him and pushing himself onto his hands and knees.  His loose back quickly bent too far downward and he winced, but swung his legs onto the floor and was standing in a second.  Duo blinked twice as his hands left the soft bed.  Standing straight, he was in far less pain than lying idly on the hospital bed.  He nodded to himself, then slowly shifted his weight to his left leg and bent his right knee in anticipation of a step.  Pain lanced through the right side of his back as he bent forward, curving his spine and moving too quickly.  Duo winced again.  "Alright," he coached himself, "maybe moving my back isn't the smartest idea right now…" With that in mind, he began to waddle out of the range of the surveillance camera, keeping his back as stiff as possible.  //_"They won't miss me if I'm only gone a minute,"// he thought as he stopped at his doorway and looked up and down the hall.  To his left were several closed doors whose numbers steadily increased before the hallway ended abruptly, and to his right the numbers decreased and the hallway continued before curving left, but not before branching off several times.  He turned right and shuffled across the shiny, cream-colored, linoleum floor as quickly as he could without causing himself undue pain.  With a smirk he thanked whatever power ruled the universe that Wufei was not around—nor any of the other pilots for that matter—to see him doing his best impression of a starved, sickly penguin.  Though Duo hadn't had a chance to see his reflection in any surface other than the dull metal tray beside his bed, he knew from the sweat plastering loose strands of his chestnut hair to the back of his neck and face that he must indeed look quite pale and sickly.  The smelly bag, which Duo had made the already cranky male nurse carry out, was evidence to just how sick he had felt only three hours ago.  Now, of course, at least his stomach was feeling quite a bit better._

Turning the branched corner (which, after looking down each way Duo realized that both led to the front doors of the hospital), Duo's eyes lit up with triumph as the pale green glow of a running soda machine could be seen filling a vending-machine-occupied alcove with its radiance.  //_"Mountain Dew, jackpot."_// He thought and waddled slightly faster with anticipation.  Feeling more mischievous than guilty over knowing that being full of sugar and caffeine while restricted to a hospital bed was probably not a pleasant combination, Duo hastily shoved the change, 15 cents more than the soda cost, into the machine and hit the top button.  There was a short delay, and then two silver coins and a small, slightly moist green can with red letters clattered to the bottom of the machine, leaving Duo with another dilemma.  How exactly was he supposed to bend down to retrieve the tantalizing liquid?  //_"…Baka…"// Duo told himself, rolling his eyes and knowing he really should have thought of that earlier.  _

***

Heero Yuy sat atop the cockpit door of his currently immobile mobile suit, the previously cold metal beneath his legs warmed with extended contact with his body.  Seemingly random letters and numbers flashed and scrolled before his eyes as he typed uninterrupted only minutes after everyone had abandoned the warehouse except him.

…And him.

Suddenly, Heero stopped typing.  His gaze never shifted as his hands came to rest before the laptop's sensitive keys.  //_"What's wrong…?"// He asked himself.  Silence, that was what kept him from concentrating.  Though he quickly arrived at that conclusion, the reason for why noise, or lack thereof, would cause him such mental unrest remained undefined.  It had never mattered in the past.  //_"No,"_// his thoughts quickly shifted tracks, //_"there is no reason for noise to matter as I repair my Gundam.  It must be something else."_//_

Heero resumed typing, though slower than usual, his keystrokes forced and nearly devoid of the superhuman ease in which Heero usually executed his duties.

Though he told anyone who needed telling that he preferred silence to the background noise of the other pilots and their chats, work, and the infamous quarrels Duo seemed to incite at every turn, Heero had in fact grown accustomed to it.  In its absence, the place seemed far too large, quiet, empty….

//_"…Dead."_//  His eyes widened at the word that crept unwished for into his thoughts. Heero shook his head to clear it, ending up blurring his vision for a moment or two when he stopped.  Shinigami, that was what Duo called himself: the God of Death.  How was it that he had come to be the liveliest of them all?  Even Quatre's friendly tones could never match Duo's jovial inclinations.  Was it really possible for Death to die?

Heero nearly shook his head again in frustration as these thoughts bombarded him in the silence of the nearly warehouse.  Even though all five Gundams were housed inside, there was still plenty of space left, open space for things to leap into.  A small metal object fell as Heero finally shifted, clattering as it struck the floor far below.  The chilling echoes it threw into the air were nearly as sharp as the impact at first, but faded, and faded, and faded until the stagnant air around Heero's now motionless form closed in around him with renewed pressure.  It smelled, sometimes faintly and sometimes strongly, of dust, rust, oil, metal…

//_"…And blood."_// Heero finished the thought, eyes flicking over to the open cockpit door of the Gundam Deathscythe.  They pried the darkness where Heero knew the flaking and peeling stains of Duo's blood—a hard concept to grasp even though the Perfect Soldier understood that everyone could bleed—would still be.  No one else, besides Trowa, had spent much time in the makeshift Gundam hangar, and no one had offered to clean the mess.  Even though Heero couldn't afford to admit that it bothered him, he still hadn't been able to bring himself to look inside that dark hole since he had pried Duo's cooling form from its death grip almost a day ago.  …Had it already been that long?

Heero once again attempted to clear his thoughts.  He had not felt guilty for Duo's bad decision at any point since his injury was exposed and he wasn't about to now.  Any further thoughts on the technicalities of the subject and what they might mean, including the irksome presence of one of J's contacts (a meeting with whom that, being a part of the mission, Heero had decided he would simply "put up with"), would have to be ignored for the time being, or at least until Heero's mind could be put at ease.

He closed the laptop with a quick snap of his wrist, in doing so activating the various defenses he had wired into it.  Though he was reluctant to leave the warehouse without human guards, Heero quickly reassured himself that the various security features he had installed the previous night would be more than enough to prevent any sort of entry.  Various lethal and non-lethal traps (with unconventional disarmament triggers) covered every doorway, window, and possible weak point in the building.  It had been quite a project adapting his usual safety precautions to fit an area this large, but fortunately it had only taken a few hours.

Heero had decided; he would visit the hospital, if only to assess for himself when Duo might be able to return.

***

//_"Maybe if I bend down and stand up real quick…"_// the braided hospital patient wondered as he stood in front of his warming can of soda.  It had taken more than just a few minutes for him to come to that final conclusion, having a difficult time concentrating now that his medication seemed to be starting to wear off.  //_"Damn, I need to pay more attention to health booklets…  Did it say quick movement was the best idea in a situation like this or the worst?"// Chuckling a bit at the fact he had just agreed with one of Wufei's lectures ("You don't pay nearly enough attention, Maxwell!  Even the strongest warriors will face defeat if they don't pay attention, though to honor you among those warriors would be a disgrace to all those who fight!), well, part of it, Duo decided that it would be best to try moving slowly first.  At least then he could pull back up if he needed to._

He took a deep breath (wincing slightly at the pressure and settling for only a half deep breath) and bent his knees, bracing himself against the glowing front of the machine with his hands.  As he began to bend his back, however, a muffled cry of surprise escaped his lips and he quickly pushed back up, expelling air like he had been punched hard in the gut.  He took several quick, shallow breaths and shut his eyes tightly.  A fresh wave of hot and cold rippled over his body and left Duo more severely aware of his back injury than ever before.

//_"Wrong answer…  God, I can't take much more of this…"_// Duo clenched his teeth against the new pain, vaguely recognizing as the numbness faded that his ribs might possibly be broken; it felt as though one each on both sides was trying to poke through his back.  //_"Uhg…  That's a new one…  Heh, let's try option number two, then!"_// He took another shaky breath, tightened his eyebrows and his grip on the machine, and quickly bent down with his right hand outstretched to reach the soda can.

Duo's fingers had clamped over the cool, slightly moist surface, but he didn't notice.  Shock was his only expression as his knees buckled and his hand tightened over the can, minimally at first, but the moment before he collapsed, every ounce of Duo's strength was subconsciously transferred to the last order his mind had given and soda began to spray from the ruptured aluminum alloy.  As Duo's shock-stricken face collided against the machine, giving his skin a sickly green glow, he released his hold and slid to the floor.  The can, which had been knocked out of the black dispenser, twirled and shot around on the floor, propelled by the cold, bright yellow liquid still spraying from its ruptured end.

//_"Pain…"_// It was all Duo knew.  He had experienced this pain before, but only for a moment before fading into blessed nothingness.  This time, however, no welcome relief came and Duo was left to quiver alone in shock on the lemon-lime soaked floor.  A coppery smell filled his nostrils, though his mind blocked it out in favor of relaying the more immediate shock of the mind-numbing pain.  

The fluid around him became orange as snaking tendrils of scarlet diffused and spread before claiming the water and dying it red.

***

Doctor Arwel stepped out of the jeep moments after Wufei brought it to a stop in front of the normally brilliant white building.  As the sun began its slow decent behind the high canyon walls, its west-facing front was dyed with a rainbow of beautiful colors: blue, green, yellow, orange, red…  //_"Red…"_// Quatre recalled his previous thoughts with a shudder, a pang spearing his heart.  Soon the valley would be bathed in the shadow of its hours-premature sunset and the cool air of a desert night.  The cherubic boy turned from the sight of oncoming night only to hear Arwel courteously tell them that she would meet them at seven …if they decided to stay that long.

Quatre had only opened his mouth to tell her of course he would be staying as long as he could when her pager began to beep.

With a hasty, "Excuse me," Doctor Arwel lifted the faintly glowing, sleek black object so she could see.  Her eyes widened as she whispered in surprised tones, "Room 23!?" and took off running into the hospital.

Quatre and Wufei met each other's gaze for a moment before Quatre exclaimed with a gasp, "That's Duo's room!"  When they looked back toward the hospital doors a second later, Doctor Arwel was out of sight, although one of the doors had just closed with a sharp slam.

Needing no further provocation, the two idle boys immediately leapt from the vehicle and tore into the building, taking a sharp right.  Maintaining slightly more control, Trowa quickly drove to the back of the building for a parking spot before jumping out and sprinting back toward the front.

Wufei was in the lead in the race to Duo's room, but a pool of stagnant dark liquid emerging from an angled snack corridor caught his eye.  He slid to a stop after it and peered back around the corner.  What he saw widened his eyes to a point no mortal should be able to achieve.

Quatre barely had time to react as he skittered along the floor, attempting to stop, turned the corner sharply to avoid crashing into Wufei, and slid to the end of the acutely angled snack alcove only to crash into a vending machine on the end after catching his shoes on the edge of the dry floor beyond the liquid, and then he landed heavily on the floor.  With a groan of protest caused by his aching head, Quatre lifted one warm hand to the ailing area and looked back toward Wufei to silently ask what the matter was.  His eyes were never raised high enough to meet those of the Chinese man, however, for Quatre caught sight instead of the bleeding braided boy before him.  Quatre's lips parted in a stunned gasp, jaw dropping at the sight.  Wufei had been spared the majority of the gruesome details as he saw Duo only from the front.  Quatre, however, had been granted an exclusive view of exactly what caused Duo such pain.  His bandages were soaked through with blood just as his hospital gown had soaked up the orange, yellow, and dark red stains around him.  A half-full, half-crushed can of Mountain Dew lay wedged between two vending machines to the side.  …And what was that odd shaped lump on Duo's left side?

All of this information passed through Quatre's mind in less than a second.  The moment after the image flew past his eyes, Quatre scrambled to his feet and over to Duo, splashing blood-tainted soda with his frantic steps before kneeling at Duo's side.  "Oh no, Duo!  What happened!?" He yelled, slightly panicked, even as his throat constricted to gag at the terrible, sour, coppery odor wafting around him.  As he looked down, the source of the odd bloody lump in Duo's hospital gown could be seen through the slit in the back, poking out of a tear in his bandages.  A smooth, curved, sharp, whitish, bloody piece of bone had pierced through the gory swelling of Duo's back and his bandages and was slowly allowing blood to trickle down the saturated cloth.  Several bits of glistening, blood soaked, reddish-black fuzz poked out with the arched bone.  None of it helped the injury to look any less painful.  The spear in Quatre's heart gave a sharp twist and he flinched, his messy right hand jerking up and clenching over his pink shirt an inch or two below his collarbone.

Duo had drawn himself somehow into a tight ball and was quivering; eyes clamped shut and mouth positioned as if trying to scream, but no sound came.  It was then that Quatre realized that Duo wasn't breathing.

"By Allah!  Wufei, get Doctor Arwel, hurry!" Quatre yelled, then reached toward Duo with his left hand, but hesitated short of touching him.  His uneasiness at the color and sharp smell of red was quickly overcome and he tightly took Duo's shoulders and shook him gently, but firmly.  "You have to breathe, Duo!"

The physical contact seemed to knock Duo back to his senses, although at the moment they all screamed with pain.  He managed a shuddery gasp, and then let loose a hollow, desperate scream.  Quatre nearly covered his ears, but was so relieved that it took so little to restart Duo's breath that he didn't bother.  

"Duo, you're going to be alright.   Everything is going to be just fine.  Duo….  You're going to be all right.  You have to be alright…" Quatre whispered over and over again, fearful, painful tears threatening to overflow his eyes.

Duo continued to gasp for air and whimper, choking at each breath.  The concerned blonde was at a loss for what else he could do, and was visibly troubled by his friend's labored breathing.  The considerable swelling and mild throbbing of Duo's gruesome injury had seemed to intensify greatly, and Quatre felt utterly useless as his helpless companion withered and convulsed on the floor.

***

As Wufei whirled around the corner and into Duo's room, he was greeted with pandemonium not unlike his own disagreements with Maxwell over the function of blaring music.  Several worried nurses stood idly around as Doctor Arwel paced back and forth, clenching and unclenching her fists and yelling to anyone and everyone within earshot about how much of an idiot "Mr. Maxwell" had to be to get up and go wandering around with an injury like that.  Apparently, the bulky, ornery male nurse in one corner had discovered Duo's absence while coming in to administer another dose of pain relievers less than a minute ago.

"I agree with you entirely," Wufei said, alerting everyone in the small, darkening room of his presence and commanding their attention.  An ear-splitting male scream echoed down the hallway, interrupting the Chinese pilot as he spoke, "but right now Maxwell needs help.  Follow me!"  With that, he sprinted back out the door, a horde of medical personnel in his wake.

Arwel arrived on the scene only moments later, just as Trowa could be seen racing through the glass double doors at the entrance.  The headlight of a motorcycle flashed behind him as the vehicle turned.

"Stretcher!" she yelled to her nurses, though two had already run for one.  "Out of my way!" She pushed Quatre aside and crouched next to Duo's tortured form, taking his pulse.  A scowl stretched across her face before she yelled, "Hurry up!" back to the rushing medical staff.  Without her needing to instruct them, other nurses had gone for IV's and other equipment, fetching them from one of the numerous medical supply closets along the corridor.

Tentatively from where he had fallen when the doctor pushed him aside, Quatre asked, "Is there anything at all I can do to help?"

"Stay out of my way." She told him with a hint of hostility in her voice.  She was looking over Duo's withering figure in frenzy, examining him for obvious complications and the source of his injury.  Doctor Arwel's gaze immediately strayed to his back and she bent over him, spying the sickle-shaped bone protruding from it.  Her eyes went wide for a moment before her scowl deepened, seeming to add decades to her already middle-aged features.  Though Wufei's range of facial expressions was nearly as limited as Heero Yuy's, miniscule changes appeared in his visage to form an expression only his closest companions would be able to distinguish from his usual frown.  It was the same face he had worn the entire exhausting night before.

As the nurses returned with the medical equipment they quickly, yet carefully loaded the whimpering Duo Maxwell onto the stretcher, the front door swung open and a thin young visitor walked slowly in, turning down the excited hallway.

"Get him into surgery, now!" Doctor Arwel shouted and the frantic nurses rushed down the hall, leaving Quatre, Trowa, and Wufei to stand helplessly around the dark pool.  The footsteps of the visitor came to a stop only a few feet away from their turned backs.  A silent moment stretched as the frenzied group of nurses rounded a corner, one struggling not to slip as she held a plastic mask over Duo's agonized face.

"Trowa, Quatre, Wufei." Came a male monotone from behind the three pilots.  "What is Duo's status?"

Quatre breathed in sharply and whirled around at the voice.  Wufei and Trowa were slower to turn their heads, eyes sagging.  "You…  You came-…" Quatre stuttered, surprised.

"Where is Duo?" Heero interrupted him without changing the tone of his voice.  His breath smelled strongly of peppermint, a natural remedy for headaches of which Quatre's mind took the moment to remind him as he stared.  An after image of Duo's stricken form and echoes of his cries still played over and over in his mind like a bad B-movie, rendering Quatre temporarily unable to utter more than a few broken syllables.  

Everyone bleeds, everyone feels pain, but Heero's pupils shrunk slightly as he noticed the blonde boy's bloody right hand clenched over his staining pink shirt so tightly that his knuckles might be mistaken for bones.  His breathing was irregular and his eyes unfocused.  Heero quickly scanned the pilot's face, noting muscle tension where the open-faced boy was more likely to show it.  //_"Pain."// Heero realized with only minimal surprise.  //_"Quatre is in pain as well."_//_

"Maxwell is in surgery," Wufei offered, but with understandably less enthusiasm than that with which he would normally announce any one of Duo's many faults (in Wufei's eyes).

"He was found on the floor in this alcove in a state of obvious emergency." Trowa continued for him.  "From the mess he left, it can be reasonably concluded that he lost a great deal of blood.  A second transfusion quite possibly might be required-…"

"How long do you estimate it will take before Duo can rejoin us?" Heero interrupted again without showing the slightest fluctuation in tone, facial expression, or body language.  "Our window of opportunity opens in less than a week and the Gundam Deathscythe Hell has not been repaired."

Stricken as he was by the prickling, stabbing pain that seemed to envelop his heart, Quatre's emotions were dealt a crushing blow at what he perceived as Heero's lack of understanding.  Duo wasn't just some Gundam part that could be ready and functioning for another mission after only a few hours.  Quatre remembered a story Duo had told him about Heero setting his leg after breaking it.  The retelling had been amusing at the time, but now it just twisted a new pain deep in the cherubic youth's stomach.  None of them but apparently Heero could set their own bones and be ready to go again!  Yet with the sliver of bone he had seen puncturing Duo's back and the black, stringy flesh around it, plus how long Duo had finally admitted it had been bothering him, it seemed entirely, sickeningly, horribly likely that their Shinigami was already knocking on Death's door.  With that information—which Quatre and Duo had already been forced to share—Heero should have at least known if not understood.

"Duo…" Quatre began, "By Allah, Heero!  I'm not even sure if he's going to make it this time!"

"Hn." Came Heero's monotonous reply: unexpressive, emotionless.  It wasn't his "what do you mean?" "hn," not his "life goes on," "hn," let alone an "I understand what you mean and I wish to express my most sincere apologies for not communicating this sooner, and also for failing to sit by Duo's side while I still had the chance," "hn."  Any of those responses would have been the product of Quatre's imagination, if not merely wishful thinking.

Exasperation dominated Quatre's already despairing tones.  "Heero, what do I have to say to make you understand?  By Allah, Duo-might-die!  We're not just Gundam parts that can be replaced at a convenient moment; we're real people, and once we're gone-…"

"I know, Quatre." Heero's cold, emotionless, mechanical voice replied, though looking up into his eyes, desperately searching for mercy, pity, anything that would tell him Heero wished for Duo's health for the same reasons the other three pilots did, Quatre thought he caught a glimmer of understanding.  Perhaps it really was his imagination, even though they all knew to some degree that Heero Yuy wasn't truly the heartless machine he pretended to be.  Perhaps, though, Quatre had caught the fleeting end of a tiny slip of the Perfect Soldier's iron mask, one that if Quatre didn't possess such a gift for reading people, he might not have caught at all.

Heero glanced calculatingly at the pool of blood and spilt soda, then as swiftly as he arrived, brushed past the three pilots and began to walk toward the emergency room.  After a few tense, silent, confused, contemplating moments, those pilots wordlessly followed their languid unofficial leader.

Silence was a state that Trowa had come to both adore and abhor.  It could mean many things, both wonderful and terrible.  Silence meant rest, slumber, quiet moments to contemplate finer things, and the thrilling moment while performing death-defying stunts right after the audience took its collective gasp and right before he would flawlessly land any number and type of flip and jump in any condition.  It meant the moment Catherine threw her knife and Trowa watched the stunned people, unafraid of what might happen should her aim be slightly off.  Those moments of silence were the moments he lived for.

Silence could mean other things as well, dark and terrible things.  Silence meant moments alone to sit and revisit unpleasant memories, unbearable cold pressing in from all sides, Heavyarms standing alone after slaughtering scores of soldiers on a "successful" mission.  Silence meant graveyards, black roses, and gravestones.

Silence meant death.

This silence, gratefully, extended only around the four pilots.  Four was a funny way of describing them, even though Trowa the Clown rarely laughed.  It was more ironic than funny, really, that should they lose Duo (another hard concept to grasp) they would now count each other: one, three, four, five.  Who could possibly fill the role of their witty Pilot 02?  Who other than Duo himself could ever push Heero precisely to the point of receiving a bullet through his head without Wing's pilot actually pulling the trigger?  Who but their annoying Maxwell could possibly get under Wufei's skin so effortlessly just to provide an entertaining show for the remaining three to enjoy?  Who else could light up Quatre's face with laughter every time he told a great joke?  Would there ever be any other who could cause the empty pits of Trowa's heart to bubble with restrained joy every time Duo flashed that cocky grin of his?  Who other than Duo could ever make a room come alive just by stepping into it?

One, three, four, five…  Without two, counting just doesn't seem right.

//_"This is injustice."_// Wufei's thoughts repeated the familiar word, idly tacking two more in front of it, but the phrase died as it reached his throat.  He couldn't bring himself to speak, to break the fragile silence between the four pilots, as if it were somehow a delicate chi spell cradling Maxwell's worthless—priceless—life.  Would the Shinigami that the young man so readily claimed to be truly come to claim him this night?  Once again, Wufei regretted that the last thing he had said to Duo was an insult.  The liveliest one among them, the one who claimed to be Death, would he really leave them all this time?  Was it possible?  Could life without Duo's annoying—joyful—antics even be imagined?  Could Wufei ever forgive himself for leaving the braided baka—genius—vulnerable twice when all that the boy really needed was someone to protect him and understand?  Why hadn't Wufei listened?

First, Wufei had argued for Duo to continue to follow their mission two days ago—only two days?—when the pilots had first discovered his injury.  Wufei's pride had kept him from seeing that Maxwell didn't need a lesson that day; he needed… companionship.  The following day, Wufei had argued with Duo for hours trying to get him to fall back as their energy supplies and endurance ran low.  Wufei blamed himself for forcing him to turn, blinded by anger, at exactly the wrong moment, thereby single-handedly causing Maxwell's near-death.  Now, only hours earlier, Wufei had left Maxwell's room when he should have stayed to watch over the braided menace.  Whatever had happened in the mean time could have been prevented entirely if someone had stayed, Wufei most of all.

//_"That makes three failures, not two."_// Wufei noted, smiling sorely as the Duo-like tones he thought in brought renewed guilt to churn in his already unsettled stomach.  One, two, three.  Pilot 02…  Would he still be able to feel indifference as OZ called him "Pilot 05" when their numbers must be counted sans the number two?  One, three, four, five…  It didn't seem just.

//_"One, three, four, five…"_// Quatre's thoughts echoed, though he still hadn't noticed the death grip in which his right hand—the foreign blood now cooling on his skin—had grasped his shirt.  //_"It doesn't feel right to count without two…  Without Duo…  It  isn't possible, it just can't happen…  It won't, it can't…"// His vision blurred and Quatre blinked, releasing a tiny, crystaline tear to shatter into millions of shards on the cream floor below._

Noticing this, Trowa placed a consoling hand upon the smaller boy's shoulder.  Wide, scared, nebulous sea foam green orbs met compassionate, sad emeralds for a long moment before the two exchanged a comforting embrace, still walking slowly down the hospital corridors.  "Shhh…" Trowa reassured Quatre's tearful form, whispering almost inaudibly.  "Everything will be alright, it has to.  Shhh…." Although Trowa didn't truly understand, or perhaps even believe his words, Quatre quieted, yet remained secure in Trowa's hold.

Wufei cursed silently in Chinese at Trowa's words, but his own reaction confused him.  Why should he be angry with Trowa for breaking their silence when Wufei blamed Duo's current position entirely on himself?

Heero stopped at the window into the surgery room, though it took the three other pilots several seconds longer to realize that they had arrived.  The thick glass muffled what little sound they could hear.  Various monitors beeping erratically lined the room and more sprung to life as frantic nurses hooked the squirming boy up to them.  Two lumbering nurses (the largest ones in the room) fought to keep Duo laying flat on his stomach while all he seemed to want to do was curl into a ball.  Whimpers and sometimes weakened half-screams could be heard clearly from inside.

"He's in shock; someone ready the depressants!" Doctor Arwel's voice yelled above the racket.  No one outside the room could see where she was amidst the throng of people.  Apparently the nurse who had undertaken the task didn't complete it quite as satisfactorily as the doctor would have likes.  "No, we can't use one that powerful!  It could very well stop his breathing!"  There was a pause as a particularly heart-rending scream released from Duo's undoubtedly sore throat.  

Heero clearly saw the bone protruding from Duo's back, the regular throbbing of the swelling on his back now that the bandages had been removed.  More than anything else, the skin seemed… stretched.  If he would have picked up the habit, Heero's eyebrows might have perked as he surveyed Duo with morbid curiosity.

"There's no time, scalpel!" Arwel's voice rose again.  "And I thought I told someone to close that curtain!"  A thin, blonde nurse jerked the thin, cream sheets over the only visual portal into the white-walled room.  Heero silently swore, //_"Omae o korosu,"// directing his threat toward the doctor with every intention of eventually carrying it out.  What a sweet mission that would be._

One more barrier, one more veil had been set between the pilots and their joyful, if sassy, companion.  They couldn't help but wonder if perhaps this foreshadowed the final black veil, but none of them could bear to allow the idea to develop into worded thought.  

//_"Everything will be alright.  It has to be…"_//

Though a direct line of sight to what went on within was denied them, the glaring operating table lights still spread blurry shadows across the ruffled curtain.  Indecipherable conversations and jumbled orders floated past the pilots' ears, but each was more confused than the last.  Finally, a thick quiet filled the room.  It lasted only a bare moment, though no one looking back would believe it took anything less than eternity.  Then, like a woeful cry of a falling celestial being, one last mournful shriek lashed out through the entire building and beyond.  A large shadow rose up the still curtains before falling as the scream faded away to nothingness once more.  Silence washed over the room and the pilots as pale light filtered down from iridescent tubes to wash over three pallid, stunned faces and a fourth that seemed not to have noticed at all.

[End Chapter 3]

AN: Alright, I know I said I'd probably be able to begin work/update on the 17th of June (almost a month ago, gomen!  .), but unfortunately life stuck it's ugly butt in the way.  When setting a probable update date, I forgot to mention that my beta reader would be heading for Australia from the 18th or so until the beginning of July.  Therefore, he had absolutely no chance to do his job amidst the packing, the flight, and the lack of computer access while exploring down under.  What I'm posting now is the result of him reading over the chapter and doing only one round of edits.  If mistakes are still present, oh well.  I needed to get this out.

Some of you may have noticed (if you looked hard enough) that I had the unfinished version of this story hidden-posted on Mediaminer.org for the benefit of my betas.  I really, really, seriously hope everyone that did take note of that also took note of the fact that I didn't want just anyone reading it.  If you already read it, you may want to read it again.  Like I _said_, this chapter went through a few revisions and ended up the size of all previous installments combined.  This was a tasty big piece of candy I handed you today.  ;)  Hope you liked the yummy, evil cliffhanger!  (The one cliffhanger…  TO RULE THEM ALL!!!)  Er, sorry there…  LegendaryFrog came out with a new flash movie on Newgrounds.com.  It is seriously hilarious!  XD  [End Shameless Plug for LegendaryFrog]  

I'd like to thank my main beta, Rya, for fetching me Vegemite from down under and being so quick to beta this for me under pressure!  Thanks much!  I think you did an awesome job from what I skimmed.

And I'd also like to thank Momo-chan (plot slave extraordinaire) for putting up with me for endless plot discussion nights!  You're the best, and without you this chapter probably would have been delayed at least another month or so. ^_^;;  Just don't suddenly disappear from the face of the computer screen for weeks on end again, alright?  …Or at least tell me where you're going.  I'll pack a laptop and join you!

Also thanks to Jasper the cat for his impossibly cute meow, Ginger the cat for her major huggable-ness, and the both of them for only fighting and breaking my concentration twice tonight. ^_^;;

I will now take the time to reply to reviewers on both Fanfiction.net and Mediaminer.org.  Fanfiction.net people go first 'cuz I got more reviews there. ^_^

**LilI:**  Sorry it's a bit hard to understand.  Hopefully the next chapter will explain a bit. ^_^

**Ketami:**  Poor Duo is right!  And things only get worse for him.  Muahahahaha…  I feel so evil.

**Zeionia:** You double posted, but thanks.  ^_^ Double posts still make me look more credible.  Ah, I love it when people mention the plot.  I spend hours every night just tossing and turning over what I'll weave in next.  (And other things, but we won't go into that ^_^;;)  Glad to see my willful torture isn't executed in vain!

**Kate (kittenhug):** Meep!  0.0  And here we have the first Fanfiction.net death threat of the story!  ^_^ Happy to know my eternal torment is contagious. 

And now, Mediaminer!

**neko satan:**  Wow, I gathered that at least a few people enjoyed this from the fanfiction.net reactions, but to say that I am the best you've read so far…  **Sniffles, starry eyes**  I will do my best to uphold the high standards that you demand!  As for your demon minions…  0.0  Meep!  **Hides and immediately begins work on chapter 4**

**duos_deathscythe:**  I hope this is quick enough for you!  I'm always happy to do my part for the less sane portion of the world. ;)

**Jako:** O.O  …Wow, I mean, wow…  I had no idea that this story meant this much to you…  Thank you so much for your kind review!  Thusly, I'll gladly fuel your obsession with this extra large bit and many more to come!  Thanks for the uber-hard kick in the pants to get updating.  ^_^

To all readers and potential reviewers, know this: without reviews, I cannot feed the muses.  Without the muses, I have no inspiration.  Without inspiration, my brain craps on the carpet, and that's just not fun to clean up.  Plus it leaves me strangely without the ability to update.  Imagine that!  So if all you non-reviewing readers out there want a new chapter (and even those who have already reviewed), stuff a review in a shoe and throw it in my general direction, then wait 1 week to 6 months for a reply, depending on how many other shoes are hailing my way. ;)  No reviews, no update! :P  Few reviews, long wait for update!  Lots of reviews, quick update. ^_^  You're smart readers.  Now can please I get one of you to do my Calculus homework?  @_@


	4. Chapter 4: Arwel's Explanation

Chapter 04 – Arwel's Explanation

"After a turning point, there is no turning back."

//…// Denotes thought.

***

It would seem of late that Duo Maxwell had developed a habit of waking up to buttery morning sunlight after emergencies involving a certain irksome back injury of his; this particular morning being no different.  The bright light reaching through his eyelids was the first thing he noticed as he slowly came around.  The second thing he noticed was the odd, numb, distant feeling of his arms and legs.  His entire body felt like a cloud, a sensation he sometimes noticed when coming out of deep sleep on a cold morning.

//"…Am I dead?"// Was his first coherent thought.  Though it took him longer than it should have to string the words together, the next moment his eyes fluttered open.  He winced at the sudden light, but his pupils quickly adjusted to it and an image of his cream-walled hospital room came slowly into focus.  //"…It's too bright for hell…"// he concluded with dry humor, but wondered suddenly why (if he wasn't dead) he didn't he feel a thing  …except cold.  Duo could never seem to escape the cold.  //"They must have me on medication."// He concluded at last. 

Duo's body felt almost as if he had been tied up his entire life and then suddenly released.  This feeling was quite pleasant, actually, since at the moment Duo's brain seemed to be filled with the same fuzz as his body was reporting.  He was in no condition to think anything else of it; that was until a nurse entered the room.

Hearing the door creaking and soft footsteps follow, Duo groaned in annoyance.

"Ah, I see that you're awake, Mr. Maxwell." A soft, feminine voice came from near the door.  "I'll fetch Doctor Arwel…."

As Duo tried to speak, a lingering soreness in his throat transformed his intended words into a series of coughs.  Immediately the previous night's events came rushing back to him, rolling over him like a steamroller.  The pain he felt had been unimaginable—and not only the pain of his injury but of the helplessness it had brought about—yet as the memories made their way to the front of Duo's mind, it all remained… distant, dream-like, unreal.  The woman hesitated at his coughs, a look of irritation on her face.  "…Er, …lady?" Duo finally managed.  "My friends, the people who visited me yesterday…  Where are they?" He wondered out loud.

"Oh, the other Gundam pilots?" Duo winced at the naive tone of the young woman's voice, as well as the obvious lack of security around this place.  //"It would drive Heero nuts…"// he mused humorously.  "They've gone to the warehouse last I heard.  You're not allowed to have visitors… this early."  The logic was there, but the strange distance in the anonymous woman's indigo eyes sent a chill down Duo's spine.  Still, his lingering grogginess ensured that any further thought on the topic was out of the question.  Eyelids heavy, Duo once again began to drift off as the slender woman exited his room.  Some sort of slight, warm, comfortable pressure—like that of a thick blanket—made itself known as he shifted further into his pillows.  It was a pleasant contrast to the fuzzy chill of the rest of his body.  //"Like hot chocolate when it's snowing, I think…  I'd like to see snow…"// He lazily pondered, relaxing completely.

His stomach gave a lurch as his room's door opened swiftly and slammed shut.  The blanket feeling became heavier and less pleasant as he shifted, looking up with wide eyes and searching the room quickly for the object of his surprise; Duo's search didn't last long.

Nostrils flared, glasses skewed, and uniform wrinkled, Doctor Arwel stormed angrily into Duo's room having slammed the door behind her.  The fury that seemed to emanate from her spread and flowed throughout the room not unlike the motions of an erupting volcano.  On a wandering concern, Duo briefly wondered if his room was sound proof.  "What the hell were you thinking!?" Arwel screeched.  "Pulling a stunt like that in the middle of our hospital, in the middle of our valley… not to mention the idiocy… letting) it go that far… among) them…" her face swelling and reddening like a tomato, the doctor seemed unable to pull her thoughts together into coherent sentences.  Duo merely laid where he was, contemplating his odd numbness as she continued on a tirade about "his little stunts".   He allowed his mind to drift (like he often did during Wufei's infamous rants) while Doctor Arwel continued to shout.  Duo only employed an infrequent "mhmm" here and there in case she expected him to respond.

//"They have nice blankets here…"// Duo silently appreciated what he gathered to be temporary comfort until his next round of medication.  //"Nice and soft, not scratchy like most cloth blankets, warmer than sheets, feels thinner than a comforter…"//  

"How could you even think about taking this sort of risk around people like them?  You could have been discovered, you could have exposed us!" Arwel shrieked.

Somehow, Duo managed to tune into the one sentence during Doctor Arwel's entire angry rant to this point that could have sent alarm bells jarring the inside of his skull.  "…Wait a minute." He interrupted her, "what do you mean by that?"

Arwel snorted.  "Those… associates of yours.  Should any outsider ever discover that members of the proud Dragyr race make their home here-…"

Duo's eyes widened.  This was beginning to sound like something out of a bad science fiction movie.  "…What did you say?  'Dragyr race'?"  He was mildly surprised as the tones, which sounded difficult to pronounce, yet rolled off his tongue with uncanny ease.  "Are you running some kind of marathon here?" He supplied comically, flailing for a bit of humor to reign in his anxiety.  Whatever the doctor was rambling on about just didn't seem to fit with anything he had ever learned.  //"It must be some kind of African sport thing, or at the very most a secret faction or something opposed to OZ….  Yeah, of course, that has to be it.  Arwel is one of J's contacts; it has to be something like that…."//

The doctor scoffed.  "Your absurdity is unnecessary.  I find it hard to believe you can question me like that.  Didn't your mother ever tell you?  You could not be here now if no one ever told you of our stronghold."

Duo's expression remained one of confusion.  A dull throb began in his head and he raised one chilly hand to it.  Doctor Arwel's eyes seemed to scan the floor, and then widened and looked to him questioningly, requiring an explanation.  The weary braided boy sighed reluctantly, and then continued with obvious irritation laced into his tones.  "I don't know what you're talking about."  He rolled his eyes in a mechanical gesture, pushing aside the painful bite of his memories and not wishing to dwell upon them.  He had plenty of opportunities for that while unconscious; the nightmare of his reality didn't need to invade his waking hours as well.  "Does the name "Maxwell" ring a bell?" Duo smirked darkly, and then, not noticing a spark of recognition in the doctor's eyes, grudgingly elaborated, "'Maxwell Church Tragedy?'  It was all over the news.  I'm a war orphan, duh."  He paused, and then continued with less punch, "As for being here, I was assigned to this mission, I didn't choose to come.  Now, if you're almost done, I'm starting to get hungry.  I'm sorta partial to rice balls, have any by chance?  I know cafeteria food is horrible, but…" Duo trailed off, his forced grin wavering and his energy waning.

Arwel sighed seriously after several moments of tense silence.  "If it's true you don't know about the Dragyr then, to put it bluntly, you're in for a shock."  She smirked at some hidden joke.

"…Whatever." Duo rolled his eyes, interested in what the middle-aged doctor had to say, but not quite so much as he had been initially.  "So, are you going to get me something?"

"You can do it yourself.  Get up." She replied tonelessly.

"…What?" Duo asked, taken by surprise.  

"Get up." The doctor repeated.

"You have to be joking."

"Get up." Arwel insisted a final time.

Duo sighed darkly, then laughed. "You're the doctor, I guess…." Placing his arms carefully beneath him as he had before, Duo began to push up expecting his body to rebuke him with terrible pain.  Suddenly, the braided boy stopped, face filled with surprise, not agony.  He lifted one eyebrow questioningly at the doctor, and then slowly turned his gaze around.

"HOLY SHIT!!!" He yelled, throat protesting the strain of his volume.  He literally jumped several feet into the air, head striking the ceiling, and then falling onto the floor, rubbing his ailing top.  Two snowy-white, feathered wings, black tinted at their second joints and draped rather ungracefully across the floor were connected to Duo's back just below his shoulders.  The skeletal appendages flopped around lifelessly as he jumped and then scrambled into a sitting position, and then proceeded to shrug as if they were some sort of accessory that he could strip off like clothing, though he had no such luck.  Though his face originally had been dominated by a surprised, almost repulsed expression, it quickly turned to anger.  "What the…  what the hell did you do to me!?"

"Other than save your life, absolutely nothing." The annoyed doctor replied detachedly.  Her tone only seemed to fuel Duo's rage.

"Bullshit!  You…  you did something!  I know you did!"  Disbelief still shone in his wide, fearful eyes, which swirled within his fury, and he continued to shout with ghosts of dark laughter heightening his tones every once in a while.

"Mr. Maxwell," the doctor tried to speak calmly over his frightened, panicking tones, "you must please try to understand that you've always been this way…"

"Like hell!" He shouted, interrupting his previous sentence, then continued ranting.  "This…  this is all a joke…  It has to be…  ha ha, very funny guys.  You can all come out now…  come out, really…  I'll only skin you alive after I'm done choking you to death…" He laughed hollowly for several moments before starting again in disbelief and anger, panic filling his voice with greater intensity.  All things considered, he took the situation rather well.

"ENOUGH!" Arwel finally shouted, silencing Duo with the force of her voice.  She stood quickly, shoulders back, arms straight down, fists clenched, and generally intimidating.  "Mr. Duo Maxwell, you are a member of the proud Dragyr race, and as such, you will behave like one.  I have grudgingly compiled a list of instructions for you, seeing as though you have taken no motion to take care of yourself in the past.  Now, for as long as I see fit, you will sit down and listen without interruption to the things I have chosen to tell you.  You will not scoff, argue, or otherwise interrupt until I am finished.  Then, and only then, will you be permitted to ask questions.  Do I make myself clear?"

Silent and decisively still, Duo replied quietly, "…Yes, ma'am."  On a wandering realization Duo found that the fuzzy feeling, which his body had earlier reported had faded (perhaps he hadn't been on medication?  But then where had the pain gone?), though the ignorable chill had not left his now-clammy hands nor the rest of his body.  Cold air had even seeped beneath his feathers and a rapid chill had spread in an odd sensation through the thin limbs.  Duo never could seem to escape the cold.

Arwel nodded, satisfied for the moment in her position of dominance, but then noticed Duo's thin, skin-and-bones wings.  They hung limply, bound only by the walls of the curtained room.  The half-drawn shades allowed late morning light to filter through and leave short zigzagging trails across Duo's bed and the floor.  "First of all," she began, "lift your wings.  You'll have a needlessly difficult time preening them later if you ruin your feathers like that."

Still unable to completely grasp the concept of the "new" appendages being his, Duo allowed confusion to gleam from his darting eyes.  "Er… how?"

Obviously annoyed, Doctor Arwel sighed and lifted a hand to her head, expressing the headache that Duo seemed destined to cause everyone he came in contact with.  "Here." She told the boy as she walked swiftly over to him and lifted one of his light wings from the floor.  "Stand up and lean against the wall."

He complied, dragging his other wing over the bed.

"No wonder you have barely enough muscle built to lift them; you've never used them, have you?"

Duo shook his head slightly, smirking at what desperate humor he could find in the situation.

The doctor continued the exercise.  "Feel this?"  She lifted one of his wings and positioned it over his shoulder, then slowly let it down to the floor.  Arwel then repeated the motion, moving over to his other wing.  Duo nodded (in reply).  "Good, now do it on your own."

Duo took a deep, staggering breath, his eyes still troubled and much of his body caught in shakes that he couldn't seem to control.  His mind was numb with panic, but was seemingly unable to register anything at the moment, save wild stabs at humor and attempts at convincing himself that this wasn't real.  //"None of this is happening.  I'm still in bed, that's it….  I haven't woken up from the hospital since going down in that fight; this is all a dream…."// Catching an impatient glare from Doctor Arwel, Duo realized that he had been standing there long enough to look entirely foolish.  In a motion too sudden to be anything but forced, Duo's wings gave a sort of feeble twitch, then a flop, and then didn't move again for several seconds.  Arwel began to tap one foot, arms folded with annoyance across her chest.  Too worked up to even think up a witty comment to lighten both of their moods (and Duo was quite convinced that his mood needed serious lightening) or much less start an argument, he attempted the motion again, gritting his teeth and obviously straining to pull up the light appendages.  Lactic acid seared through the tiny muscles lining the bones of his 15-foot wings, opening a dormant section of Duo's mind to every detail of the contracting organ system and beyond.  Though it felt like an eternity, before Duo had even realized it his strain had lessened and his wings were positioned folded over his shoulders.  He opened his eyes and blinked several times, dumbfounded.  As he relaxed slightly in his momentary surprise, the thin appendages fell back onto the floor, top joint striking it hard.  Duo winced as a prickling sensation raced up and down the bones as if he had struck his elbow.

Doctor Arwel sighed, clearly nearing the end of what little patience she had gathered.  "Get on the bed." She instructed him coldly.  Duo complied, lying once more on his stomach.  His brain felt as though the chilling sensation that constantly surrounded him had frozen it over.  He lifted the weak, light appendages with his hands and folded them instinctually.  It was perhaps a good thing that his shock had not yet leveled out; the realization that he completed this with such practiced ease might have upset the youth even more.  Duo was still shaking as he watched the doctor fetch a chair from a shaded corner and drag it into the dappled light at the foot of his hospital bed.  She remained silent for several minutes, as though to wait for Duo's mental functions to return before elaborating.  Within five minutes, the young man had halfway convinced himself that this entire occurrence was an elaborate OZ scheme (though none of his wild ideas could explain the little hints along the way, the things that had always been but remained ignored, the fact that such technology and medical knowledge couldn't possibly exist yet, the point that OZ would have had to have initiated this wild scheme before the violet-eyed youth had reached age five, and that this was an awful lot of trouble to go through for just one subject.  Then again, he was a type D… thingy, like that doctor lady said…).  Then, Arwel took a deep, calming breath—like Wufei often did while attempting to reign in his temper when confronting Maxwell—and began to speak.  The longer she spoke, the wilder her tale became, but the less Duo was able to write it off or ignore it.

She told him how his wings have been growing slowly inside his back since around age 12, possibly causing redness, but not causing much irritation due to the few receptors of pain on the skin of his back.  He experienced great irritation recently because of the huge growth spurt that occurs at the end of this three-year period, which tends to last two months.  Arwel explained that he already went through a week of it by her calculations, in which his wingspan swelled from a 5-foot wingspan to 15 feet.  Duo closed his eyes and smirked at this, suddenly aware of the reason for his greatly increased metabolism of late.  He had always been a thin kid (part of living on the streets), but he had been losing weight like crazy recently and was currently somewhere around 94 pounds.

"I told you not to scoff." Doctor Arwel scolded Duo, who immediately returned to the dreamy, concerned face that his shock had left him with.  "Now, our wings are the pride of our race, they are made of a special Keratin that allows them to bend, fold, and contract quite easily inside of our backs.  The complexities of this highly evolved organ system would be far too difficult for you to understand, child.  The skin of our backs, as you might have noticed, is the surface of an extremely specialized organ that heals quickly when sliced or split.  This is essential as our claws have the function of cutting a way out from where our wings are stored.  The organ that stores our wings is actually a very complex muscle group that is responsible for pulling your wings back in and storing them under extremely high pressure.  You have glands at the bases of your wings beneath the skin that produce and pump a special chemical through your wings that causes them to soften for their storage.  You may have also noticed shallow dips in the back of your rib cage that have been filled with muscle.  Our flight muscles contract as well in storage, though not quite as severely.  Now that your wings are out, you'll notice that they fill those grooves and extend with even more bulk beyond."

Duo was half paying attention, half not.  Unlike Doctor Arwel's practiced, relatively short speech on the "Type D", she sounded as though she had studied these things that she now spoke of, but never had to explain them to anyone.  She paused frequently (between every sentence) and didn't seem to know what to say next.  The braided boy resigned to lying languidly on the bed with his new and strangely familiar appendages balanced immobile over his shoulders.

"Perhaps I should explain this before anything else….  About the growth spurt, you will need to let your wings out for 15 minutes every two hours for the next week, including at night.  I understand your position among your… acquaintances," she seemed colder suddenly as she admitted Duo's position within the ranks of his fellow pilots, "and therefore you will need to know… you can max out at four hours with little pain or consequence.  After that, however, your Rager^r^a—that's the organ responsible for healing after your claw slices—will be unable to keep up with the strain and your… your skin will become raw and it will be quite uncomfortable (of course you'll have noticed that little to no pain is caused by the splitting of your skin, but much is caused by the strain of the muscles and pressure to your wings, which still can feel pain…).  No matter what situation you are in, I strongly advise against putting it off for five hours.  Your skin will split by around that time, and not only will the bleeding be an unnecessary minor risk to your health, but it will be quite unsightly and suspicious considering your company.  I can't imagine a situation where you would need to go more than that long, but by ten hours your wings will be released involuntarily.  Even if it wouldn't be for the serious health risk so many hours of bleeding, such a release would put a serious strain on your Rager^r^a.  It takes a lot of energy to keep up with the constant and quick rebuilding of cells.  It is my place to also strongly suggest that you eat more in the future.  Your weight is dangerously low already….  Your wings need to be released to give your body a chance to… rearrange, and your wings need a chance to dry, harden, and stretch."

The doctor paused several long moments this time.  Duo had been running his fingers along the top joint of his wings, slipping the fidgeting digits through the fuzzy, black, apparently ornamental feathers that covered his skin, of which traces of blood had been washed from.  He wove his fingers across the smooth, dry skin beneath and around the bases of his feathers (a strange thought, but one that seemed peculiarly distant at the moment) until he came across a smooth, bone-like protrusion.  Curious, he ran his fingers slowly along the pinched top of the six-inch claw, feeling his strange muscles flex automatically and lift the gleaming, pearly bone out from beneath the plumage covering it, right as Arwel paused.  The stretch was mildly satisfying, he realized, as his fingers reached the pointed tip.  Without thought, his curious fingers broke from their momentary hesitation and began to slide back down along the bottom.  A mild shock of slicing pain shot to Duo's brain as the sharp edge sunk into his fingers and drew blood.  "Ow!" He shouted in surprise.

Just having taken a breath to continue, Arwel quickly abandoned her previous thought to continue along another.  "I should have warned you.  Yes, your claws are very sharp.  They need to be."  More to stall for thinking time than out of real concern, the doctor walked quickly to a nearby cupboard to fetch a band aide and ointment, then applied both to Duo's bleeding, slightly shaking fingers.  Remembering the words of the blonde youth from the day before, Arwel sighed at the realization of how much of a shock this must be to the braided boy in order for him to have remained quiet this whole time.  Finished with the bandage, she threw away the wrapper and set the ointment on the stainless steel tray with Duo's IOU note still sitting on it, and concluded, "…Those are the basics of our biology, at least in terms that any 15-year-old Dragyr might understand.  Do you have any questions?"

Still shell-shocked, Duo lowered his eyes further, unable to force an answer into his throat.  Everything she said seemed absolutely true, and her explanation sounded much more realistic than his theory of a wicked plan of OZ.  His thoughts turned suddenly to how his friends would react.  He knew Quatre would probably be the most responsive next to Wufei.  The cherubic youth would probably be stunned, then sympathetic and concerned, and pretty much typical of any halfway decent person out there.  "Injustice!" Would be Wufei's first word, followed by a rant spanning from everything between ancestors, women, the greater good, and Duo's many weaknesses….  Duo had to admit that he didn't really know Trowa well enough to tag a reaction on him.  The silent clown rarely spoke, but he tended to have wiser things to say than the others when he did decide to.  Heero…

Duo scratched his head.  A fleeting image of himself telling and showing Heero Yuy the biggest shock of his life flashed quickly through his mind.  In this image, Heero's response was his usual reply of "hn" and the stony boy casting him a quick, calculating glance, and then asking him when Deathscythe would be repaired.  Duo laughed out loud, realizing only a moment later that he had succeeded in draining away even more of the doctor's patience.  She clearly had not expected to give an explanation when she stormed in only… half an hour before?  Falling silent, Duo's thoughts wandered quickly to the battlefield.

They wandered to his alter ego, as he liked to call him, Shinigami: the person he became while surrounded by death and destruction.  In a moment of stunning insight, Duo wondered how an "addition" to himself such as this would affect the flow of the complete mental transformation he had to undergo between his "real" life and the one that followed him as a Gundam pilot.  He was already having difficulty with his reflection, with knowing that his face, his body, his arms, legs, and hands were those of a murderer (but not his braid, not his wardrobe, and not his name.  Those did not belong to him, those things belonged to the greatest people that Duo ever had the good fortune to meet).  Duo already believed himself to be a monster, no different from those that took the lives of everyone he had ever loved so many years ago.  He only lived with his self-image by insisting that he had a reason, a very good reason to.  The colonies needed him, even if most of them didn't realize it.  He just didn't know if he could live with the fact that every time he had insisted that he hadn't lost his humanity to the war along with everything else he ever had to lose… was a lie.  Duo felt dirty and terribly cold.  He wasn't human after all.  He was… D, Dragy something… type D?

Doctor Arwel cleared her throat to bring Duo back to the present.  A few seconds after the noise reached the young pilot's ears, he seemed to come to his senses.  His eyes locked with hers, eyebrows drawn into rigid slants.  Duo's voice was no longer muted and sounded quite serious and firm when it passed out of his throat.  "Yeah, I've got questions for ya." He told her with the sort of tone he usually reserved for particularly hateful OZ soldiers.  "My question is 'How?'  How can I be a… a whatever you say I am?  I've seen some strange stuff, but there's always an explanation behind it.  Lady, I'm not exactly into the habit of taking everything someone says to be Gospel truth."

As if expecting this, Doctor Arwel continued nearly unfazed.  "While humans evolved from apes, we evolved from reptiles.  Our race is far, far older than theirs.  We developed intelligence and have recorded our history since the time Dinosaurs roamed this planet.  When our astronomers warned us of an asteroid approaching, chosen members were sent underground.  They were the strongest, fastest, and brightest, and they brought with them important records of our history, though only half of those records survived.  There they remained for millions of years, the pathways lit artificially, burrowing deeper and deeper into the planet to find warmth and sustenance.  Here, there was no room for our bulky wings, no space for our large bodies, and not enough food for our lightening-fast, warm-blooded metabolism.  We evolved into slimmer, lankier beings, and our wings developed the ability to be contained within us.  We became shorter, smaller, and developed excellent immune systems to cope with the hundreds of new diseases that we came in contact with.  Our tails disappeared entirely, and our eyes became the color they are now to help reflect the ultraviolet light."  She paused briefly as if wondering how to continue.  "We also developed the R^R^oua."

Before she had a chance to pause and stall again, Duo rolled his eyes and asked, sneering uncharacteristically, "And what's that?"  He was decidedly stressed, angry, and overall, pissed off.

The doctor paused anyway, deepening her breathing as if trying to remind herself not to lose patience with Duo.  "Different areas of our wings," she said slowly, "change color when an immediate family member perishes."

"From whatever color they are normally to either black or white, right?" Duo quipped sarcastically, a particularly nasty expression widening over his face as he tried desperately to convince himself that all this was bullshit.

"No," Arwel clarified for him, "from whatever color they are normally—white in your case—to either black or red.  Wings are normally very light pastel color or white more commonly-…"

"Wait!" Duo shouted, filled with surprise and… sudden hope.  Quickly checking over his own wings, then looking back to the doctor with wide eyes, he asked breathlessly as he pointed to the black feathers around his claws.  "What does this mean?"  He checked his wings again, as if he was afraid that the rest of his feathers would suddenly fade to black if he looked away too long.

"The feathers of your top joint correspond to your mother.  The top bone edge is for your father.  There are always three eggs to a clutch, so your two siblings split the broad flight feathers.  Your oldest sibling takes the feathers farthest away from your body and your youngest sibling takes the feathers closest to you.  Each hatches a year after the one before it…"

Duo's face was mixed with extreme emotions.  He wanted so badly to believe that it was true, for that meant that he still had family, that he wasn't alone after all.  Still, fear clutched his heart in its strangling hold, causing it to beat at a rate that couldn't possibly be healthy.  It couldn't be true; he didn't want it to be true, yet he did….

He tuned out as Arwel continued on with the rest of her explanation.  It was impossible… he just couldn't believe it….  

Duo might have been interested to learn how the Dragyr evolved through the ages, developing a sort of symbiotic mimicry with humans after several plagues and disasters caused their numbers to dwindle.  She told of their ancient forms of art, and of the prized skills of their race, which served as a sort of right of passage into adulthood.  Arwel also explained their notably longer life span and slower aging, both byproducts of their immune system.  She also told him why so much peroxide must be used; with so many Dragyr gathered in such a small place, any and all necessary precautions must be taken to prevent a single sick member from causing a plague that was sure to wipe out their remaining numbers.

The braided boy processed this fact dully, the majority of his mind's function being spent on deciding if he wanted to believe it or not.  His thoughts quickly turned to a dark day in his past, eight years ago.  Perhaps it was his… inhuman immune system that saved him from dying from the plague on L2, while Solo…  Solo….

Duo's fingers fell from his feathers.  His eyes fell to meet them.

Not seeming to notice, Doctor Arwel paused for a moment to think before admitting, "…We never expected to find any more Dragyr.  I suppose it's possible… but it's hard for me to believe that you could go this entire time without any innate knowledge, any hit or suggestion that you were, well, different…."

The dark youth sighed heavily, a sudden weariness creeping over him.  Everything Arwel had told him, everything that he had tried to convince himself wasn't true, fit.  It was possible.  //"It's more than possible, the whole damn, fuckin', stupid….  It all fits…."// Duo clenched his fists and teeth, closing his eyes tightly, then relaxed and slowly opened them.  Over his face stretched a loose frown and Doctor Arwel noticed for the first time the dark rings under his eyes.  "…I guess…" he supplied weakly, "I guess I have had a few… clues along the way…" Suddenly, his eyes widened and he looked up, realizing something he should have before.  //"Of course!  Why didn't I think of it?  God, I can be such a baka at times…."//  "Hey, lady!" He yelled angrily, eyebrows tightening as a glaring inconsistency beat at the inside of his skull.  "What about my belly button?  I don't know much about biology and that shit, but I couldn't have been born from an egg!"  He was outraged, angry, and generally pissed off that she had tried to pass such an obvious lie to him.  How could she expect him to believe this?  //"Ha!  I've got her now….  OZ, you'd better watch out!  You may be losing your touch, but Duo Maxwell's skills are as sharp as ever!"// Quite pleased with himself, Duo laid back cockily and awaited the doctor's answer, which took surprisingly little time to form.

The doctor frowned irritably, disgusted with the apparent stupidity of her current charge.  "That," she rolled her eyes, "is an evolutionary step which has been completed within the past two-thousand years.  Some superstitious humans took up the practice of hunting us down after grouping our race with what they call 'demons'.  Our mimicry was perfect except for the presence of 'belly buttons'.  If you'll notice, yours is probably not exactly the right size or shape."

Duo glared at her angrily, then quickly checked.  Instantly, the last defense he could raise between himself and this truth had crumbled.  Doctor Arwel was right.  Duo had never spent much time examining his navel before, but now that he did, he noticed that the doctor was exactly right.  He sighed.  "Oh… that's it then…." Unable to come up with more of a reply, he busied himself once more with his feathers.

The doctor nearly smirked as she found humor in the situation, a rare thing for her.  "Your friends say that they normally can't get you to be quiet."

Duo laughed half-heartedly, his voice softer and more irritated than usual, "I'm an honest guy, the truth is that I'm still a bit shocked right now…." A growl sounded from his stomach and he continued weakly, "…and hungry."

The stern woman sighed.  "A growing Dragyr's metabolism…." She mumbled, and then walked over to the large cream button and the speaker above it.  Pressing the button, she ordered rice and the special from the kitchen.  "You can't get it yourself yet, to be truthful.  I have to teach you how to work your wings yet.  With those friends of yours wandering around, we can't risk them seeing even a slight glimpse of you like this.  You need therapy before humans of any kind can see you again.  Though our rooms are sound proof, your friends would have to be executed if they were to learn our secret."

Duo smirked at what humor he could find.  //"I thought they were sound proof…."//

***

Over the next week Duo remained in his room and received therapy for three hours every day.  His exercises included how to contract and release his wings and electronic nodules were placed over his muscles to assist in the building of muscle where he would need it.  The stern doctor also made him memorize a list of instructions on how to preen and otherwise care for himself ("because you obviously know nothing about the matter").  Despite all his treatment, by the end of the week Duo still had trouble balancing with his new appendages.  On the final day, the doctor gave him a series of numbers and the name of a street.  She told the braided youth that it was in this city.  

"Return when you wish to perfect your flying skills and leave the disgraceful company of your associates.  I hope that you decide to arrive sooner rather than later."  Arwel told him.  Duo refrained from replying, too busy gathering the coded blueprints and his other possessions that were scattered all over room 23.  His mind only caught up with the doctor's dialogue several seconds later, as he had been far too focused on the joyful feeling fluttering inside him.  Tomorrow was the day that he could see his friends again!  He had thought of plenty of new tricks to play on Wufei, plenty of jokes to crack, a few new topics to have one-sided conversations with Heero….  Even as the scathing tones of Arwel's voice finally contacted his brain, Duo's mood couldn't be dimmed.  Tomorrow, he could leave these strange, anal, angry Dragyr and life could return to normal….

It was a thought of his own that finally dimmed the hopeful flame within him.  Normal, it was something that Duo could no longer claim to be.  Not that he ever claimed to be normal, but there was a huge difference between the idle claims of a child and ugly, horrible, undeniable facts.  Tomorrow he would be returning to his fellows… as an outsider.  He would fill the same shoes that he had left behind, but Duo was worried that possibly those shoes would no longer fit.  The boy who had laughed at death almost as often as he had at the Sunday comics would no longer be who he once was.  Well, he had always been who—what—he was now, but now that he knew… could he face the others with the same cheerful grin he had worn when he still believed himself to be….

Duo could no longer deny that he was a monster.

Thinking that her words had in fact convinced Duo to return as soon as he possibly could, Doctor Arwel nodded more to herself than to Duo.  She turned on one heel, walked swiftly out of the room, and left Duo alone to brood in silence.

***

As he stepped out the open door of room 23 early the following morning, Duo was greeted by all four of his friends, some showing their relief and joy more than others.  He wore the same black garb he always did, the same black shoes, the same cheerful grin, and the same plaited hair, yet the heart he wore twisted and curled in his chest as Quatre launched at him with a crushing hug.

"Duo!" He yelled joyfully.  "I—that is to say we—were so worried!  I'm so glad you're back!"

Taken only slightly aback, Duo replied in falsely cheerful tones, "Hey, buddy!  It's great to be back!  I missed you all too," then, to complete the effect, he tossed in jokingly, "but unless you want to send me straight back in there," he indicated room 23, which now had its curtains drawn and was bathed in red, brown, and black, "you may want to lighten up just a little bit…."

Quatre immediately jumped back, horror written all over his face.  "I'm so sorry, Duo!" he said quickly.

Duo merely laughed. "It's alright, I'm joking!  Quatre, you can calm down."  //"That didn't go quite as well as planned…."//

Shaking his disturbing thoughts of red from his mind, Quatre sighed, nodded, and giggled, but remained silent.  He couldn't think of what else to say.  Only moments earlier his mind had been buzzing with hundreds of things to tell the braided boy, but now none of them seemed to be a proper thing to break the silence with.

"Welcome back, Duo." Trowa said warmly, grasping the boy's left hand with his own and shaking it.

"Hey, Tro!" Duo grinned in response.

"I would like you to know, Maxwell, that if you ever pull a stunt like this again…" Wufei began.

"…The dishonor and injustice, blah blah, and weak like women, blah blah blah….  I've heard it hundreds of times before, 'Fei.  I'd think that by now you'd get some new material…." Duo quipped sarcastically.

Wufei's face reddened with anger and he took a breath to begin another rant, but was interrupted when Heero moved past him and locked his calculating gaze onto Duo's face.

The braided boy froze.  He usually kept some sort of witty comment or joke saved for the inevitable long moments of silence that stretched between himself and the person he considered to be his best (if least expressed) friend.  Unfortunately, Duo had only a few times before this where he had been faced with Yuy's analyzing stare, and every time he froze just like this.  Duo didn't dare move, much less breathe, until Heero looked away several long moments later.  "Hn." He voiced quietly, almost as if the affirming sound was meant for Heero's ears alone.  "Our window of opportunity is approaching." Heero told the others in his usual monotone. "We need to go."

As Heero began to walk toward the exit, brushing against Duo (who was scrambling to retrieve his cheerful mask from wherever it had gone), Arwel pulled him aside and whispered tersely in his ear, "Remember, every two hours."

"I know!" Duo replied, rolling his eyes, before pulling away and rejoining the others.

"What was that about?" Asked Quatre as the braided boy fell into step beside him.

Duo shrugged and replied, "Just a little reminder; nothing to worry about."

Wufei smirked.  "Probably telling him not to do that again."

Laughing, Duo quipped, "Like she would need to when my own personal nag lives only a few feet away!"

Growling, Wufei yelled, "MAXWELL!!!"

Duo smirked; things were definitely getting back to normal.

[End Chapter 4]

AN: And another round of updates hits the presses. ^_^ Sorry about the lateness, but this was a really hard chapter to write.  Cliché discovery scenes like this are always a pain in the butt to write.  It's really difficult to avoid making them sound corny, and I'm still not sure I got it right.

Just to serve as a warning in future, I didn't get nearly enough reviews this time to warrant such an early update.  I'm only posting now because it's now or next month, and I don't want to torture you readers _too_ badly. ;)

Special thanks goes out to Rya once more for getting this chapter back to me with quality beta reading despite a severely shortened time period to work in.  

Thanks to Momoko-chan for reappearing and giving me an extra-hard kick in the pants to update. ^_^

And also special thanks to SS for reasons stated below!  :D

Fanfiction.net, Mediaminer.org, and the SDDI get the spotlight this time. ^_^

Mediaminer.org is first this time with a grand total of 3 reviews:

**Dyna:** I'm glad the last chapter was exciting enough. ^_^  I must admit, I had my doubts while writing it….  Was this update fast enough?

**princesspriscillamaxwell:** Do you have any idea how hard your name is to type?  ^_^ Finally, someone who mentions all of the effort that was put into this!  I was beginning to think that readers took my constant slaving for granted…  Well, here's a little treat for you. :D

**HellsDarkAngel aka neko satan:** Now I have updated.  Please don't kill me!  **Puppy dog eyes** O^O,

Fanfiction.net in the fray…

**tina:** "What happened?" is the question that you're reading the story to find out. ^_^ If I just told you, that would be no fun.  I can, however, tell you that the things explained in this chapter fall FAR short of clearing up everything.  Now that the beginning of a plot is forming, the story can begin to move along.  The next chapter I daresay is my favorite in this entire story. :D

**Duo's girl:** Ah, so you've noticed the precarious position that our favorite stone-cold bastard has been placed in.  I'm not supposed to tell you that this is very important, but I guess I just did! ^_^;;  And thanks for the shoe!  I shall treasure it forever!  :D

And last, but certainly not least, the Society for the Defense of Duo's Intelligence (SDDI):

**SS:** Thank you, thank you so much for your reviews of every chapter and installment!  The best reviews come when readers decide to share their thoughts about certain parts and what it makes them believe/feel/etc.  Only then do I know that my style of writing is working.  Feedback is by far the most essential thing readers can give me to help me improve my skills.  Thanks so much!  +special thanks

Once again, I feel that it is my duty to remind all readers (and thus potential reviewers) that without reviews, I find myself without the ability and ambition required to update.  Please don't just read this chapter and think that "someone else will review; I don't have to".  Every review counts; every review brings the update date closer to today!  Stuff a review in a shoe and hurl it in my general direction, then wait several weeks for a reply (in the form of an update)!  Well, ja ne until next time. ^_^


	5. Chapter 5: The God of Death

Chapter 05 – The God of Death

"The God of Death is back from Hell."

//...// Denotes thought.

***

Duo found it difficult to keep his mind focused while battling the humid summer heat of the small, two-roomed safe house that the boys had acquired. Too much had happened in the past two weeks; and, musing, he realized that if the other pilots knew the truth, they wouldn't blame him for being unfocused.

Before he knew it, the faces situated around the small, cluttered, circular table before him shifted and faded. Heero's face (directly across from Duo's) lengthened, aged, and his hair stretched into a single bun. Then Heero's piercing stare locked with Duo's half-lidded eyes and became a dark, leering violet....

"Duo, are you paying attention?" the stoic boy's monotone snapped the braided youth back to reality. Duo's hand quit supporting his head and fell to the table with a thump; his head might have been behind it if it hadn't jerked up at the mention of his name. Duo had been half expecting a lecture on his dishonorable, shortsighted human behavior. He half chuckled, but realized too late that the others could still hear him.

"Maxwell, you dishonor our cause when you fail to take our situation seriously! How dare you act as though this is a joke!" Wufei began another rant, which only caused Duo to chuckle harder at the irony. Leave it to Wufei to say exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time....

Suddenly a knife-like, annoyingly familiar pain twisted itself anew in Duo's side. He hadn't been expecting it, and his laughter was cut short as he hissed sharply and tensed up, interrupting Wufei's rant.

While Wufei froze open-mouthed, Quatre quickly placed a comforting hand on Duo's shoulder. "Duo! Are you alright?"

Duo blinked and shook the haze from his head, then replied, "Yeah, just fine." It wasn't truly a lie, but it was stretching the truth. Duo was fine, physically at least. He doubted that he would ever truly be "just fine" again, at least as long as he was unable to talk with his closest (and only) friends about the very thing that had allowed him to survive back on L2, but now refused to let him truly live.

He glanced at the dingy round clock on the wall over Heero's head. It was 3:00 PM, just over three hours since the last time he was able to let his wings out. Two weeks had passed since he left Dr. Arwel's care, and only once had Duo been able to make the two-hour deadline. Every time he tried to sneak away, it seemed either Quatre or Wufei would be right there giving him some light task to keep himself busy, and Heero sure kept an annoyingly close watch. Trowa just seemed to be avoiding him. Then again, the braided boy never recalled having seen much of the silent European.

Duo cast his gaze around the table. Quatre sat with a worried expression on his right, and Trowa sat next to the Arab. On his left, Wufei wore a more peculiar expression, and Heero did nothing but glare from across the table. Amidst the clutter of paper, pens, photos, and Heero's ever-present laptop, everyone was staring at Duo as if to make sure that he was indeed all right. Duo sighed, slapped on his trademarked grin, and assured the other four, "Hey, I'm alright, ok? Everything's under control."

Reluctantly, the others returned their attention to planning the mission at hand, though careful glances were still thrown in Duo's direction intermittently. Duo, however, still wasn't paying attention. He had already presented his conclusions about the target's security and come up with a relatively well received, if somewhat risky plan. Although Quatre, of course, had protested to his attempting to execute such a detailed subterfuge as that which had been outlined, even he had to admit that Duo was the only man for the job. He only had to sneak in, disable the alarms, defenses, and surveillance, and pretty much open the doors for the other pilots to come in and start blasting away in the confusion. It should have been simple, but information that Duo had uncovered this morning had made this meeting necessary.

A delivery of 10 Leo mobile dolls and 20 Aries would be made to the base tonight long before the pilots could safely move out. Although they had long since mastered the art of fighting and defeating the unmanned crafts, the officers of the base would be able to safely fire into the melee without risking their own pilots' lives while the Gundams were thus preoccupied. In order to accomplish their objective, Duo would have to defeat every defense within a window of under five minutes, and he would have to do it alone.

An uncomfortable forty-five minutes later, Duo shifted in his seat for one last time before Quatre adjourned the meeting. Duo quickly excused himself to the bathroom (the only equivalent of which was a cramped outhouse far back in the trees of their German location) and ran outside while only barely catching a scathing remark from Wufei, and quickly shut the door.

Within, Quatre quickly took his chance to glare unconvincingly at Wufei. "Why do you say things like that?"

Surprised, Wufei asked, "Like what?"

"Just about everything you say to Duo is some sort of insult. I for one don't find it very encouraging." Quatre clarified quietly, but without solid conviction.

All eyes were on him as Wufei scoffed, "I've always spoken to Maxwell like this."

Sadly, Quatre shook his head. "Maybe that's part of the problem." Silently, he gathered his papers and followed in Duo's wake.

Wufei didn't need to ask for clarification this time; his thoughts mirrored Quatre's. Angrily, he snatched his few papers from the table and stormed off to the small second room of the house and slammed the door. He would be there for quite a while.

***

Duo ran as fast as he could through the thin, coniferous alpine forest. He could no longer see the tiny, deteriorating cottage with its chipped, off-white paint and warping support beams, but the wooden outhouse was still clearly within the range of his vision. He couldn't take any chances, but the uncomfortable pressure in his back was quickly becoming pain. /"Only a few more seconds…"/ he told himself as he picked and dodged his way through the tall pines, crunchy needles, and snaking roots.

Quatre slowly made his way toward the outhouse. Duo's hasty exit was perhaps typical of him, but that didn't keep the cherubic boy from worrying. "Duo?" He quietly called as he approached the outhouse. It didn't smell like it had only a few days earlier, before someone had cleaned it out. Quatre wasn't very familiar with the maintenance of toiletries. He stood beside the weathered wooden stall and knocked.

About 20 yards away, Duo heard his name called and twisted his head around in surprise. /"Shit."/ He mentally cursed, even though, luckily, the outhouse blocked his line of sight (and therefore Quatre's). He smirked a moment later at his unexpected pun. Just then, his foot caught on a root. Duo yelped in shock as he tumbled face first to the forest floor.

Quatre looked around the side of the small building, to the source of the crashing sound, but saw nothing. He sighed and leaned heavily against the splintered wood. "You know, Duo, sometimes I really wonder if all this is worth it." Silence was his only answer, so Quatre continued. "I mean, all the danger we put ourselves in…"

Unknown to Quatre, Duo was tense, face down in the dirt, and 20 some yards away, though he still caught about half of what the young Arab was saying.

"Wufei doesn't mean what he says," he went on, "well, at least not all of it. I think he's just as frustrated as the rest of us are."

Though what Quatre was saying suddenly twisted Duo's throat in a tight knot, he really wished Quatre would just hurry up and go.

Quatre laughed softly with a strange irony more fit to tickle Duo's morbid sense of humor. "Or maybe Wufei really does mean it. Maybe everything he says about weakness and honor…" Quatre's face fell and he sighed again. "I still don't think you should go on our next mission Duo. If you could take an extra day to explain what you've found, maybe Heero or Trowa could do your part and you could rest back up to full strength." He sounded hopeful then. "I know you're not quite yourself yet…" his tone fell again, "but you're right. We'll be under handed if you stay back. Thirty mobile dolls shouldn't be too much of a challenge…. I just don't know, Duo. It just doesn't-… nothing… feels right."

Duo took note of how his friend stumbled over the word "feel", but thought no more of it. A particularly painful throb just pulsed through his back, and it took most of his concentration to avoid retching. /"When this is finally over, I'm going to kill that idiot doctor."/ He told himself.

"I'm sorry I bothered you, Duo. If you don't want to talk to me, I guess I understand." Quatre turned and slowly began to walk back to the cabin as if half hoping that Duo would call him back. Of course, Duo didn't, and after a few long moments (entirely too long for Duo to wait), Quatre disappeared into the rustic shack.

As if the gentle click was the shot of a starting gun, Duo slammed his palms into the bed of sharp brown needles and sprinted the last few feet to a shallow depression in the landscape where he could finally ease this woefully familiar pain.

***

Half an hour later, Duo walked back through the narrow door and into the claustrophobic hallway that led into the cramped living room/makeshift kitchen. Duo wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but the somber mood he found three of his companions in hadn't been it.

"Woah, what's with you guys? Did someone's dog die or something?" Duo asked with a laughing tone.

"Duo! There you are!" Quatre exclaimed, relieved. It was plain by Trowa and Heero's stiff postures that Quatre had spent the past half-hour trying to bring them to his view. It had probably been a long, mostly one-sided discussion. Maybe Trowa had tried to reason with Quatre; perhaps Heero had finally demanded silence. As grateful as Duo was for Quatre's concern, he had to agree that his anxiety was unrealistic. Well, maybe it was realistic enough from his companions' points of view, but as long as he could remove himself from their sight once every two hours without worrying them, Duo was in very little danger. 

"I was starting to worry." Quatre began again. "You've been out for over half an hour. Heero told me not to go looking for you, but Duo, could you please refrain from doing that? I must sound like a lecturing parent, but we're all just as responsible for you as you are, and you worry me."

Though he was slightly taken aback, Duo still kept his ever-present grin and replied, "Hey, I'm all right Quat'." Jokingly, he put a right hand over his heart. "I solemnly swear that I'll never worry you like that again."

Quatre sighed and seemed to lose his nerve. He lowered his eyes and sat down slowly into one of the nearby moth-eaten chairs.

"Quatre, really. I'm all right. I don't want anyone to worry. The mission will go just fine, I'll be fine." Duo insisted.

From behind a closed door, Wufei heard the entire muffled conversation as he laid reading on the bed. Several silky strands of ebony hair framed his face as he tried to block out Maxwell's voice. Almost a minute later, he slammed the book shut in disgust and stashed his glasses in their case, then shoved both into his "important" bag. As he threw open the door and stomped into the front room, all conversation ceased as Duo and Quatre watched Wufei irately cross the threshold. As soon as he slammed the front door, Duo scratched his head and wondered out loud, "What was that about?"

Outside, Wufei chose a quiet spot behind a tree away from the cramped shack and sat wearily in the shade of the tall pine. This forest was indeed old; few trees still had lower branches and the canopy blocked nearly all sunlight. The pine needle floor, if a little uncomfortable, was cool and dry, and the rough pine behind him was large and sturdy. Wufei drew in a deep, even breath of fresh alpine air. He immediately regretted it, as the crisp perfume of cool pines succeeded in further awakening him and clearing his head of everything he had just read, leaving him with only the demons that plagued him.

Wufei hated Duo with an intolerance that was almost instinctual, but even more he hated his own inability to help the baka. Any time Wufei found the words that might express his turmoil, they died in his throat as soon as Duo so much as moved. Still, Wufei truly regretted many of the things he said and everything he failed to do. He had already failed his wife; he didn't want to fail his comrade too.

Marian, the sweet sound of her name defined him more than his own. His Nataku had joined the Dragons and the Kais in the heavens, leaving him on Earth to continue the war for justice. Sometimes on the battlefield, he thought he felt the presence of his precious, irritating woman nearby, but even if she was there in spirit, he could never see her again in this life. Wufei would never get a second chance to protect her, have her, or hold her. The only thing left for him to do was to finally end this war and bring forth the justice that his Nataku had so passionately fought for.

And that included protecting and assisting the other four pilots. Though Wufei found it difficult—now more than ever—he respected Maxwell. Wufei just wished that he could find it within himself to respect his own efforts a little more.

Wufei took another breath and moved into a meditation position. Perhaps now he could bring himself to clear his mind and concentrate.

***

"Mission initiation, 21:00 hours. Gundams, status check." whispered Quatre over the COM link much later that night. A tiny wire ran from Gundam to Gundam to relay the message without any chance of interception. The pilots kept their voices down to fool any audio surveillance equipment in the area now that they were in position.

"01 ready, all systems green." Heero reported monotonously. The Wing Zero lay on its back near a rocky outcrop.

"02 in position and ready to go." Duo whispered into his headphones. He stood several yards away from the first chain link fence, hidden within a sparse bush. He had quite the assortment of completed "projects" strapped to his waist and no doubt several more in less obvious places.

"03 green." Trowa replied from the rusted out hull of a broken down truck. His Gundam rested behind while he sat nearby with a pair of binoculars. 

"04 reporting, I'm ready." Quatre confirmed. He was positioned quite a bit nearer to the German OZ base than Trowa, who sat against a hill almost two miles away.

Wufei sighed and rubbed his temples in a soothing circular motion.

"Wufei, are you ready?" Quatre asked after a few moments of silence.

"Yes, 05's systems green." Wufei responded tiredly.

"Stay focused, everyone." Quatre reminded them. "Alright, Duo." He reluctantly gave the boy the go-ahead.

"02 heading in. See ya in 5 minutes, guys. Disconnecting COM link…" There was a tiny pop, a fizzle, and Duo was on his own.

It didn't take him long to penetrate the outer fence. It was electric, but of little consequence. A pair of rubber gloves, wire cutters, and some careful snipping allowed him to quickly bypass the first defense.

The next challenge was slightly more difficult. 50 feet of flat, unobstructed soil separated him from the inner concrete wall. He dashed across quickly, being careful to avoid the frequent passes of searchlights. It was fancy footwork, but Duo made it.

/"Let's see…"/ he thought as he pulled out a pair of bulky sunglasses. Duo pressed a button on the side and activated the infrared option. He clearly saw heat from the spotlights, but he was really watching for the men on top of the wall that he had scouted from behind the electric fence. Duo knew that at least one of them had a pair of either night vision or infrared goggles on (inferior to his little projects, but just as dangerous). 

/"Shit!"/ Duo silently cursed as he quickly dove out of the way of a passing searchlight. He scampered back to the wall and pressed himself flat against it, hoping to escape being seen by anyone who had been alerted by the sound of his fall. Duo clearly saw the outline of just such a person as the black-clad youth looked up and the German leaned over the top wall. Duo moved his hand to his glasses and switched on night vision. He almost sighed loudly in relief as he discovered the absence of goggles on the German's head, but held the breath instead.

"Na, Hanz? Geben Sie mir seine Taschenlampe. Ich habe etwas gehören." (Hey, Hanz? Give me your flashlight. I heard something.) The man called back over his shoulder. Duo had no clue what he said, but was pretty sure that the man had called to his buddy, Hanz.

"Langsam, langsam. Ich bin nicht ein junge Mann. Was horen Sie? Wo?" (Patience, patience. I'm not a young man. What did you hear? Where?") Hanz replied as his footsteps approached Duo from above.

"Da druben." (Over there.) The first soldier told Hanz as he pointed where Duo had fallen moments before. His heart raced and his breathing quickened. "Es war, ah…" (It was, uh…)

"Na, und? Was?" (And? What?)

"Es hört wie eine Katze, aber, eine Katze kann nicht ins here sein. Seine Taschenlampe, bitte?" (It sounded like a cat, but a cat couldn't get in here. Your flashlight, please?)

"Ja, hier ist." (Yeah, here it is.)

A flashlight flickered to life several feet in front of Duo, causing him to gasp sharply. Thankfully, the first soldier sneezed at that exact moment and dropped the flashlight. Duo cringed as the light washed over him on its way down, and then clattered to the ground. He took off toward the first fence immediately.

"Da! Franz! Ich sehe etwas! Mach schnell! Das licht!" (There! Franz! I see something! Hurry up! The light!)

"Hanz, was?" (What, Hanz?)

Duo didn't stick around for the rest of the conversation. He was already halfway to the fence, but turned sharply and ran the long way down between the two walls. He heard the unmistakable sound of dogs being released behind him as he turned a sharp corner. "Damnit." He cursed quietly, then dug into his stash of projects and found a stained, furry, white cloth. It was a piece of untreated rabbit skin dusted in cocaine. The dogs wouldn't be able to leave it alone, but one good sniff of it would make their sense of smell useless for hours. It was crude and not an easy project to complete, but it was effective. Duo threw it back around the corner directly from the bag, then placed the dirty bag within another, sealed it, and tucked the whole thing back with the rest of the little gadgets in his jacket.

Duo resumed running. To turn another corner, he only had to run half the total distance of the side he had just turned from, but it was still a long way. He continued to dodge the frequent floodlights. By the time he managed to turn the last corner, he was breathing hard and his legs protested any further motion severely. /"Shit."/ He thought, then looked up, around, and both ways to the side. He had about 7 seconds to work before he would have to dodge lights again. /"No, too many people up top. I won't be able to climb quickly enough…"/ He checked his watch, squinting at the display with his night vision. /"I've wasted too much time already. Arg, damnit!"/ Duo dodged the floodlights as they threatened him, just barely avoiding being caught in the second. Thankfully, he didn't fall this time.

He took a deep breath after the last one and made a quick decision. /"Alright, I'll take it here. With a little coolant, no one should be able to pick me up on Infrared, and I'm wearing enough black to bypass night vision as well. Gotta do this quick…."/ Duo dug around in his projects and pulled out and unfolded what looked like three big clear grapes on a bulky, gelled iron vine, and a small container of some other gel. He smeared the contents of the small container all over key points of his jacket and skin, shivering as the icy chemical made contact. Duo understood chemicals quite well, but he hadn't developed this specific mixture. It was an endothermic reaction that he had found in a fire extinguisher and modified. The grapes were actually the padded points of a grappling hook.

Duo swung and threw the hook over the battlement and tugged. The sharp points of the hook pierced through the gelled ends and hooked onto the wall. He gave it two quick pulls to be sure it was secure, then hoisted himself up and started climbing. It was quick work; any slower and the trailing rope would have been caught in the spotlight. As he was folding the light frame of the hook again, however, he felt a hand on his shoulder and heard a male voice in his ear.

"Enschuldegung Sie, wie heissen Sie? Ich kenne Sie nicht." (Excuse me, what's your name? I don't think I know you.) Came the deep, polite voice of a soldier.

/"KILL HIM!"/ Was Duo's first impulse, and sure enough, he had tensed, snatched the compact pole of the small beam scythe at his side, and turned halfway around ready to strike (even without the blade) before he was able to check himself. He must have looked odd, stopped abruptly like that as he forcefully thought, /"There's no need to kill him!"/

"Was ist los, bitte?" (What's wrong?) The confused soldier asked with a hint of concern.

/"He must be new."/ Duo concluded. /"He'd have shot me five times over by now if he understood who I am…."/ Duo shook his head to himself and the OZ soldier behind him, then took something that looked like breath spray from an inner pocket in his jacket, and sprayed the man in the face. He collapsed immediately into unconsciousness, and Duo caught him and laid him down to make him look as if he was sleeping. /"He's so young…"/ Duo noted as he took a good look at the man's face. Of course, all OZ members were young, but Duo couldn't help feeling pity for his might-have-been victim. Then again, the German boy had to be at least three years older than Duo. He shook his head to bring himself back to the mission.

/"Time to move; I've wasted too much time already."/ With little more than a short scan of the ground below, Duo jumped down from the wall and into the heart of the OZ base.

***

"It's been almost five minutes." Quatre announced over the com.

None of his three quiet companions responded.

"Heero, I'm worried." Quatre addressed the stoic youth.

"Hn." Heero replied. Silence fell over them again.

After what seemed like an eternity, Quatre announced, "4 minutes, 45 seconds. Guys, he's cutting it close…."

"We know what time it is, Quatre." Wufei told him irately.

"Duo said he'd get in within 5 minutes. He'll signal us." Trowa's calming voice sounded from the com.

"Duo will be there." Heero stated plainly.

Quatre sighed uneasily and watched his glowing watch as it counted down the seconds. 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1….

His watch's chime sounded and began counting a new minute. There was still no sign of Duo. Quatre shifted worriedly.

Just as Quatre reached over to send another video com message, a loud explosion appeared over the base, followed by several more. They were fireworks, and Duo's signal.

"That's Duo. Let's go." Heero announced as Wing Zero stirred to life, crushing rocks as it began to stand.

Quatre wondered for an instant if the others had even noticed the two seconds that had glared from his watch as it counted past five minutes, but as the other Gundams rose like an elite regiment of golems behind their winged leader, he resolved to focus instead on the task at hand.

***

"Shit!" Duo swore as a bullet pierced the dirt only inches from his feet; he actually felt the ground rise up beneath his foot as the projectile burrowed into the earth. It wasn't like he had long to ponder the phenomenon; his assailant had shouted something to a buddy out of sight, and the unmistakable sound of a request for backup being filed over the radio quickly followed. Duo turned and ran while several pairs of footsteps and a loud gun retort pursued him. There were more than a dozen voices yelling all around him as he slipped into a dark corner, breathing hard. The spotlights and radios were the only security systems he had left intact. He couldn't do a thing about the radios, but with the push of a small red button, Duo set off several explosives that he had left by the main generator. The spotlights flickered a moment, went out in a rush of paralyzing darkness, and flickered to life again. Backup generators were scattered throughout the base and in the surrounding countryside, and they would need the Gundams to get to the vast majority of them.

The destruction of those generators was key to their mission. Without the backup generators at this base, the nearby factory (which manufactured and recharged mobile suit power cells) would be unable to continue production. The Gundams had already crippled the area over the past two weeks by covertly destroying key power lines from other districts, and therefore the area's ability to import power without great cost. This systematic destruction, however, left OZ with a pattern to follow and an easy conclusion to make.

Then there was the problem of not knowing where the external backup generators were located. Heero could easily find them by hacking the executive system from the inside, but they all worried that the data might have already been moved or deleted.

Duo was breathing hard as he climbed the side of the building that he had used for cover. His infiltration hadn't been easy by a long shot. Internal security had definitely been tightened, and more than one dead security guard lay in a bloody heap behind him, along with the gutted remnants of any security bot to cross him, as well as countless shattered cameras and sensors. The vast majority of these occurred near the end of his journey when he no longer had time to adjust the frequencies of his various stealth systems.

The group of armed men ran quickly beneath him without looking up. It seemed strange to Duo, who so often had his neck craned back, that other people so rarely tended to look up. At the moment, though, he didn't mind that fact.

As he moved to reach the remote activation key to his Gundam, Duo cringed and nearly dropped the small handheld device. He only barely held onto it as a shock coursed through his body. At first he thought he'd been shot, but the pain was different and annoyingly familiar. He checked his watch and mentally groaned. It had been two and a half hours since the last time he had a chance to release his wings, and that last time had nearly been a disaster in itself. The pilots had just gotten their Gundams into position when Quatre came looking for Duo to pass the time. The darker youth spent 15 minutes avoiding Quatre, time he was supposed to be spending resting and stretching.

Duo chuckled softly to himself at the humorous memory and pressed a sequence of buttons on his small computer to activate the autopilot. Deathscythe rose to life in a pandemonium of mechanical groans and snapping canopy and trudged stiffly toward the base. Only its cloaking system and black paint hid it from the enemy, but even that wouldn't confuse the unaided eye for long.

Thankfully, it didn't need to. Loud shouts sounded from every corner of the base (Duo had already taken out the alarm system) and a large group of men was trying to force the Mobile Suit hangar door open. The access panel and hydraulic systems were warped beyond the ability to function, courtesy of Duo Maxwell.

/"That'll buy me some time."/ Duo silently told himself, reflecting on his execution of this simple solution. He waited for a last group of men to run beneath him before jumping down off the building. He rolled with his landing and was up and running in no time, taking the greatest care to stay hidden as much as possible. Of course, there were fewer and fewer shadows with each passing moment as more and more floodlights were switched on manually.

It was inevitable, perhaps, that within seconds Duo had nowhere left to run. He clung to one last dark corner and feverishly searched for another. When he found none, he cursed, /"Shit! …Well,"/ he thought as he removed a loaded handgun from its holster on his hip, /"I suppose I can't avoid it any longer. Anyone who sees me has got a date with his maker."/ He took a deep breath, secured the weapon in both hands, and pushed off into the pale floodlight.

Considering how close he was to the heart of the base, there was surprisingly little opposition between him and the barracks. He hid around corners rather than shooting, and by the time he reached the inner wall he hadn't fired a single shot.

Unfortunately, he grew careless. As he re-used his grappling hook to secure a rope to the wall, a familiar hand was placed on his shoulder. Duo nearly whirled around, but again stopped just short of ending the young man's life. Instead, as he caught a glimpse of the German OZ soldier's face. He incredulously shouted "You!" but a moment later, wished that he hadn't.

The young man blinked open-mouthed, then cleared his throat. With imperfect grammar and a heavy accent he asked, "New here you being? No, ach, I see you before?"

There is a difference between firing a blaster at a line of OZ mobile suits and firing a shot into someone standing right next to you. In ranged battle, or any Mobile Suit battle, the person behind the controls remains a distant, faceless casualty, a tragedy that never truly touches the one pulling the trigger except in retrospect. 

As Duo pulled the trigger of his small handgun, with its barrel nuzzled into the blonde youth's side (someone not much older than himself), the difference was very apparent. As the muffled shot entered his abdomen, the confused look never left the young Aryan's face. He staggered back a single step, touched the bloody wound, and with his gaze asked Duo what had happened.

Duo's returning gaze was cold. His hands were clammy, and much of his body was numb. He raised both arms, turned to face the young man fully, leveled the gun at the German's chest, and fired a second time. The boy's heart burst at the impact, and his shocked, lifeless body fell bleeding to the ground.

Duo winced, shuddered, and pried his frozen fingers from the semi-automatic pistol, then put it quickly away. He wrung his hands to remove what he thought to be an excess of sweat—curiously warm—but looking down, discovered them drenched in blood. He twitched, and then wiped his shivering, shaking hands off.

/"Get over it, Maxwell. It's not like your hands have never been coated in blood before."/ He coached himself, then turned and scaled over the wall. Deathscythe was waiting for him.

***

Less than a minute later, Duo climbed into Deathscythe's familiar cockpit and settled himself into the seat. The others were already engaged in battle at various points around the military base, as both Deathscythe's scanners and the loud explosions told him. Duo rubbed his hands, hoping to instill some warmth into them, but moved on without much success. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes in an attempt at both quieting his shaking hands and mentally readying himself for the up coming battle. 

When he finally released the breath and opened his eyes, a dark look had overtaken his features and he grinned. As Duo took the controls and Deathscythe's mechanical "eyes" flickered a bright, unearthly green, Duo quietly stated, "The God of Death is back from Hell."

***

[End Chapter 5]

AN: What a way to end the chapter! I hope I've left all you readers satisfied, and if not, rabid, obsessed, and ready for more. ^_^ I've been horrifically busy lately, but somehow I found the time to type this, and Rya once again amazed me and got the beta reading done in under a week. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Now comes the time where I reply to reviews.

Fanfiction.net first this time because they had fewer reviews (and therefore, I can get through them the quickest. ^_^)

Amber: Yup, Arwel's a bitch, and yup, I made her that way on purpose! ^_^ You'll understand why later, but I don't think Duo ever will. ;) Make sure you get plenty of sleep! Sleep is always a good thing. 

socceremie: Did you review on Mediaminer.org AND Fanfiction.net? …And how many times? 0.o Well, thank you for reviewing lots! Thanks to your effort, everyone gets chapter 5 BEFORE Christmas instead of after! :D

Shadowed Light: Yes, and now you've waited about 3 months. :P The good news is, I've finally gotten enough reviews to warrant an update! Thanks for your patience, but doesn't sitting at your computer get boring after a month?

Gleevul_Maniac: 0.o Well, please don't burn your eyes out! If you do, you won't be able to read the rest of the story! ^_^ Now you have an update, and chapter 6 is on the way! 

And now for Mediaminer.org…

wren_legacy: I won't hurt you for not reviewing, you just won't get the next chapter as soon. ;) I'm glad you're paying attention to details! And discovery scenes… ick, no more of those. . Plot twists are more my style. ;) Every story has to have at least one character for the readers to absolutely hate! Right now, that's Arwel. Duo's problems just snowball from here, but I couldn't resist giving him a temporary respite in chapter 5. Please do come back to pester me! I'm lazy, and I need much prodding. :D

neko-satan: Wh00t! I'm not going to die! :D I'm glad you like the story so much. Obviously it's a Duo fic, but I hope I've left some chewy bits in there for fans of Quatre, Wufei, Trowa, and even Heero. Well, I've updated! Before I disappear on hiatus again, I think I'll buy an anti-demon sniper rifle! Well, I'm off to e-bay! ^_^

socceremie: Didn't you review on Fanfiction.net too? -.o

black beauty: The update is here! Now don't die of suspense! ^_^

Phoenix Element: *o* I have your review hanging in my locker, on my sketchbook, and in every other conceivable place I could possibly put it! The little details took me more than a year of research to get right, and sadly, there is no possible way that I'd be able to include everything that I've done with my research in this story. What has been explained so far, though, is far from everything. ;) As for Wufei, even 2-dimentional bastards are people too, even if they're just 2-dimentional bastard people (cough, Arwel, cough). ^_^ I hope this update is enough to sate your appetite, even if only for the few minutes it takes to read it. :P

"When Will you update?": Yes, I have been waiting for more reviews. …I've also been grounded. ^_^;; Not only am I lazy, I have to sneak on the computer too. Here's your update, and off I go!

And so concludes another chapter of Taking Flight, as well as another fruitful year of fandom. I'm currently entertaining the idea of posting this story on Deviantart.com as well as fanfiction.net and Mediaminer.org. Tell me what you think! 

Well, the only reason that I'm currently awake is thanks to a healthy supply of caffeine left in the cupboards, in my system, and the promise of more in the morning. Peace, love, and chicken grease to all, and to all a good night!


	6. Chapter 6: Trouble on the Battlefield

**Chapter 06 - Trouble on the Battlefield**

_" That was rude"_

[[...]] denotes thought.

::: is a scene break, because Fanfiction.net won't let me use my traditional scene breaks anymore...

:::

A line of green fire burst forth from the shadows of the alpine foothills, kicking up dust and debris in its wake, to cleave several mobile dolls in two. The unearthly light came to rest about one hundred feet beyond them, and settled back into the shape of a glowing thermal scythe. Only the orange and yellow explosions of mobile doll fuel tanks could have made the hellish black figure attached to it visible in the black night.

Quatre shivered. It was hard to believe that the same Duo who practically radiated cheerfulness could complete such a radical change of personality in only a few seconds. The way Duo attacked-no, the way he killed-the dark youth took an almost manic pleasure in it. It was almost as though his weapons contained a sentience of their own, a personality that overrode that which was Duo whenever it became necessary to use them.

Then, of course, Quatre could say the same of each of the pilots. They all were forced to become deadly killing machines on the battlefield. They also all expressed their regret in their own way. Quatre repeated the words "I'm sorry" every time he was forced to take a life. Trowa and Wufei expressed the same in silence. Heero? Who knew Heero? Although he had been known to visit the relatives of his victims on occasion.

Duo did he ever express regret? This question greatly disturbed Quatre. He could take hundreds, maybe thousands of lives on the battlefield and not have a care in the world just minutes later. Maybe Duo's cheerfulness was his form of repentance? Quarter remembered one time when the darker youth told him that he fought "to put the smiles back on peoples' faces." Maybe, hopefully that was it. With a wary sigh, Quatre resigned himself dutifully back to the mission, trying to ignore the maniacally grinning face that appeared on the thumbnail of Duo's cockpit camera.

"Die! Die! All those who see my true form-" Duo's voice trailed away in mid-sentence, leaving only a confused, open look in its place. A score of mobile dolls and suits were still flying around, waiting to be dispatched into realms un-traveled by living mortals, as Deathscythe's motions suddenly halted. The doll he was just about to dispose of turned and aimed its rifle at Duo's face.

"Maxwell!" a shout from Wufei snapped Duo back to his senses. He ducked down and to his right just as the doll fired its shot. The energy beam passed harmlessly over his left shoulder with only a few feet to spare. Deathscythe rose again to the side of the machine, flexed its fingers, and gripped the doll's throat with both hands, crushing it and severing the wires [[_NeRvEs_]], fuel lines [[_ArTeRiEs_]], and hydraulic swivels [[_TeNdOnS_]]. It collapsed lifelessly to the ground, kicking up dust in its wake. Deathscythe's gleaming eyes burned acid green holes through the haze.

Duo panted heavily from the adrenaline rush and whispered colorful curses at himself for allowing his concentration to be interrupted.

Heero pressed a few buttons on his console and Duo's face grew large on the glowing display. Between dispatching the occasional mobile doll and sneaking steadily closer to the base, Heero watched the screen with a barely perceptible scowl.

Unknown to Duo, his whispered curses hissed softly through the cockpit of every pilot's Gundam. Though Quatre was relieved that Duo was no longer shouting like a maniac, the rapid curses were caustic to his ears. A blush spread across his face after a particularly colorful phrase. He didn't know that could be done with a .44 Magnum" Wufei grumbled irately. Suddenly, an alarm went off in his cockpit and several blinking red windows popped up on his screen. He checked the display, then incredulously checked it again. The door of an underground hangar had been opened and a score of mobile dolls and suits flew out, effectively tripling the number that had remained on the field only moments before. What was more, an unmistakable beam cannon was raised from the depths as well, and its mechanism groaned as it circled to point with deadly menace at the pilots. "Maxwell!" Wufei yelled, jabbing the transmission button so hard that it was a wonder the worn plastic didn't crack. "I thought you were going to disable their defensive weaponry!"

"I did, Wufei!" Duo snapped angrily in protest. "I disabled all the security and defenses, the power to the anti-aircraft stations, and the main generator! They'd have to deplete half their fuel supply, or black out half of Germany to fire that thing! Don't worry, Heero can get in just fine."

"Well, he could," Wufei sneered, "if he wasn't swamped by mobile dolls! You said nothing about twenty more stored underground!"

"I'm not perfect!" Duo replied, gritting his teeth. The silence that rang out between them after that admission was almost tangible. Wufei reigned in his temper using a strategy similar to Duo's, only involving much more silent declarations of dishonor upon the boy.

"Stop fighting each other!" Quatre interrupted, breaking the tension between them. "Look, let's just concentrate on keeping those suits off of Heero while he gets the information we need." The cherubic youth's complexion hardened perceptibly and his voice took on the tone of a leader. "Trowa, work on taking out the beam cannon; we can't afford to risk even a near miss. Wufei, Duo, cover Heero. I'll be on your north side"

Their battle continued on almost to the morning, and in the end they only barely escaped. OZ had anticipated their attack far more than any of the pilots had realized. It had strategically planted false information right where the pilots were sure to see it. If Duo had been less preoccupied, perhaps he would have noticed how obviously fishy the readiness of his information had been. Of all the pilots, his data had been the most faulty. However, as Quatre mercifully put it, at least everyone was still alive.

They fled to Spain, unfortunately retaining only what was packed in their "important" bags and stowed in their Gundams. Duo "disappeared" for about half an hour during their pre-dawn flight in order to take care of his own irritating business, but since Deathscythe was infamous for its stealth capabilities and each pilot's path was generously spaced from any other, it didn't raise any sort of suspicion.

A whole day and a half passed before the pilots again saw each other, and then only thanks to Heero and Quatre's use of the coded channel. The various Gundams were hidden ingeniously within 25 miles of Madrid.

Quatre wandered through the city's market place with wide eyes and a nostalgic smile. Golden rays of sunlight fell warmly upon his pale skin, caressing him and lending a healthy glow to his cheeks, which had been beginning to lose their rosy hue in favor of a more ashen tone. The bright, warm colors of everything in sight blurred into a swinging sea of brilliance as his vision blurred from tears arising not only in response to the harsh rays of the sun. How he missed life among the Maguanacs! His dear friends, Quatre would forever cherish his memories of the times he spent with them.

His peaceful wanderings were abruptly interrupted when a boy no taller than himself roughly bumped into him. Without stumbling, as if he had prepared for the impact, the heavily clad teen walked past and away leaving Quatre to struggle for his balance.

[["_That was rude_"]] Quatre thought, still dazed from the sudden jolt. As his hand brushed his side, however, Quatre gasped. His wallet was gone! The boy was a pickpocket, a thief! The cherubic youth whirled quickly around and searched the crowd for the retreating thief's black baseball cap and navy blue, bulky denim jacket. His search didn't last long, only long enough for him to fleetingly wonder if it was the boy or his jacket that filled up that large bulk. The thief hadn't gone far.

Without a second thought, Quatre followed him at a brisk pace, worming his way through the thick crowd. As if he knew he was being watched, the thief sped up as well, moving with deceptive dexterity through the throng of people. Quatre had trouble following him at times as he accidentally bumped into various people, and lost sight of the thief over the heads of others. A moment later, though, he would always catch sight of the boy again and the chase would resume.

It wasn't long before they reached a more open area of the market place. The thief made sharp, nimble turns left and right to avoid Quatre's line of sight, but he seemed almost lazy about it. Always, the thief kept his face hidden, no matter how Quatre twisted and turned for a glimpse.

The thief led him closer and closer to the wall of a large, two- and more-story apartments. Just as Quatre came within five feet of him and reached out to tap the boy's shoulder, a hand not his own shot out and grabbed his other arm, then pulled him into an alleyway. Quatre's heart fluttered in alarm until the sight of Trowa and Heero in the narrow space calmed his nerves. Wufei had pulled him in, and then let go of his arm.

"You're late." Heero accused the newly arrived pilot.

Embarrassed, Quatre admitted, "I lost track of time. A thief stole my wallet, and I was chasing him before Wufei-"

"Where is Maxwell anyway?" Wufei suddenly asked out of the blue, seemingly unconcerned with Quatre's situation.

"Right here." Duo said as he turned down the alleyway holding a great deal of produce. He shrugged off his lumpy black cap and let his braid tumble down from inside it. Quatre suddenly understood his encounter with the thief. Duo no longer seemed heavily dressed, and Quatre wondered if it was truly possible to hide that much food under such a thin jacket. "I have your wallet right here, Quat'." Duo told him as he walked closer. "Everything is still there, I just needed some way to lead you here without drawing too much suspicion. A cop looked like he was following me for a while, so I didn't want to involve you." He stopped in front of them, sat down in the almost night-like shade of the alleyway, and released the produce into his lap. "Lunch, anyone?"

Suspicious of where he had gotten the various fruits and vegetables, Quatre cautiously bent down and selected a small bunch of grapes. Inspecting them closer, he was surprised to find them already washed, and popped one of the juicy, sweet fruits into his mouth. The other pilots declined, and suddenly self-conscious, Quatre lowered his hands and guiltily snuck another grape into his mouth.

"Your loss." Duo shrugged and began to inhale his food at an alarming rate.

Heero scowled, Trowa politely looked away, and Wufei asked with disgust, "Where do you put it all, Maxwell?"

Duo swallowed his food and grinned sheepishly, providing no answer. As he reached for his next piece of fruit, his hand instead clasped a folded piece of thick, polished, slightly worn brown leather. "Oh, here it is, Quatre." Duo tossed it and the blonde clumsily caught it, then quickly opened the snap and took inventory of the bills.

[["_What am I doing?_"]] Quatre asked himself halfway through. [["_Don't I trust Duo? He said it's all here_"]] Slowly, Quatre folded and closed the wallet, then slid it into his thin pocket. The cool leather felt good against his warm skin.

For several moments, the boys entertained an uneasy silence as Duo continued to eat. He stole glances at them every few moments, but as he caught their gazes trained on him, he quickly found a much greater interest in his food.

Finally, Wufei spoke; anger imprinted in his voice and emblazoned on his face. "What happened back there, Maxwell? What happened to that information that you were so sure on? Thanks to you, not only was the mission a failure, but repairs to our Gundams won't come easily."

"This isn't the time to point fingers, Wufei." Quatre firmly reminded him as he noticed Duo's half-hearted smile fade. "We just need to find a new place to stay and lay low for a while." Then, turning toward the deeper darkness further into the alleyway, he continued, "Heero, you told me over the encoded channel earlier that you had found a strategic location."

"Hn." Heero shifted his weight against the smooth plaster wall behind him to his left leg and swept his eyes in a wide ark past all the pilots. "It's a studio near the edge of the inner city: two stories, a large, open main room, and six smaller rooms including one bathroom. There are three on the first floor, three on the second. An open, inner spiral staircase leads to the top floor, and one wall is covered in translucent glass windows for easy escape if necessary. It has three exits, one leading to the inner building, one to a small overhanging balcony outside, and an outer window in each bedroom and the bathroom leading to the fire escape. The fire escape is also accessible from the balcony. The large central room is open and unfurnished, and the kitchenette would provide no strategic cover. The wall of windows, while it would break up the shapes of anyone inside, would allow far too much light to escape at night. We can counter both of these disadvantages by hanging sheets at strategic points to create workstations. We can also line the outer perimeter with black felt to stop light from escaping."

Quatre nodded appreciatively, as did Wufei and Trowa.

"Do we really have to stay in the inner city?" Duo objected. His gaze flicked back and forth between Heero and the other pilots, though he tried to hide it. "I mean, it would be easier to escape the city if we were further out, away from nosy neighbors in cramped apartment buildings who always seem to remember just the wrong things"

"Actually, Duo," Trowa spoke, mildly surprising the other pilots with the shock of hearing his quiet voice. "We would have far more trouble with such neighbors in less dense communities. Fewer people are likely to think it unordinary for new renters to refuse visits in an apartment complex."

Duo sighed disappointedly. "But I wouldn't mind the month's supply of Jello for moving into a suburb"

Wufei smirked. "With you around, it wouldn't last a week."

Duo laughed sheepishly at that, but made no more objections.

"I'll go make the down payment, then." Quatre offered. "I have to say, Heero, that for this type of encounter, I'm a little less conspicuous than you."

"Hn." Heero could only agree.

:::

Despite the inconvenience of being located in the inner city, Duo had to admit that the apartment had a certain charm. If nothing else, the lighting and architecture was beautiful. He had the distinct sensation when walking through the door for the first time that he had entered some sort of artist's studio, not a middle class Spanish apartment.

He discovered early on that the cheap window in his room didn't open, and even though Heero made an attempt at fixing it, there was just no way he would be able to leave the house via that exit without making a terrific racket. He did uncover another, slightly less convenient escape, however. Although his habits annoyed the other pilots, his braid was a useful excuse for spending 20 minutes in the small, single bathroom every few hours, and it was no different than his usual routine. There was enough noise during the day to make the bumps of his wings on the walls and ceiling seem inconsequential, but nighttime was an entirely different matter.

It was on a night three days after the five arrived that Duo's shaky plans began to fail. He sat silently in a far corner of the large living space of their studio apartment. It was vacant of sound at even 11:50 PM except if he listened to the few cars still active on the streets below. It was his shift, and had been so since 9. His dual-toned wings draped lazily around his small, shirtless frame, and the only illumination in the large, sectioned room came from the dim street lamps far below and outside.

[["_10 minutes_"]] Duo sighed as he stole a glance at the icy blue numbers of his glowing watch before finishing his thought. [["_10 minutes until Wufei's shift. He'll be up in 5 minutes, and it will be his shift until 3, then Heero's until 6._"]] Even though he had only lived at the new safe house for three days, he had quickly made use of his precious knowledge of the other pilots' patterns and habits and the night watch schedule to escape every night to let his wings out, and even test them a little. [["It will be impossible for me to sneak out during Heero's shift."]]_ He cursed silently, knowing it would be a long, painful night unless [[_"_Unless I sneak out at the end of Wufei's shift._"]]

Duo's watch let out one nearly silent beep, signaling that it was 11:54. He stood up, stretched, and drew his wings back in; the feathers and bones grew soft and flexible, the joints snapped, and a new layer of skin covered the compressed appendages. He leisurely pulled his black shirt back on over his head and leaned lazily against the wall to await Wufei's arrival.

:::

Exactly two hours and 55 minutes later, Duo quietly, carefully rolled out of bed. [["_Maybe next time we could invest in better sleeping arrangements. I swear this spring mattress is 50 years old_"]] He leaned back and popped a few vertebrae, but went wide-eyed at the sharp sound. Duo stood rigid for several long moments as the shock of the sound disappeared from the house, and then finally let out his breath. Carefully, he hid his jacket on his right side and made his way through the door, down the open hall, picked his way down the spiraling wrought iron stairs, and tiptoed to the bathroom.

Unknown to him, Heero awoke at the sound and caught his retreating form disappearing into the bathroom only several feet away from his slightly ajar first floor door. He resisted the urge to grunt in irritation and after a series of swift, silent movements began walking soundlessly across the floor.

Duo had been acting strangely (more so than usual) since his operation. He had been too quiet, sometimes trailing off in the middle of a sentence, eyes deadened, only to continue a moment later. His laughter rarely reached his eyes, and he had been leaning further forward as he walked sometimes, as if expecting to counter a great weight, then straightening as soon as he noticed. [["_I should have mentioned this to Quatre. This is his job._"]] He caught himself thinking.

On his way past, Duo noticed Wufei reading in the same corner that he had sat in only hours before, reading with a book light. Duo never knew that the Chinese warrior did anything but rant, glare, and fight. He mentally noticed this unexpected discovery and continued carefully on his way.

After he slid into the bathroom, Duo carefully closed the door. He kept the handle turned to keep it from clicking as it closed, and then locket it behind him. From there, he turned to the window and unlatched it, then pushed it out. Night sounds from the street out front grew almost imperceptibly louder as he slid out onto the alleyway fire escape and positioned a piece of wood in the window to lodge it open.

Wufei looked up as Heero walked stiffly past, lowering his book and his reading glasses. "Is it your shift already?"

Without answering, Heero raised a key in his right hand that hadn't been there several moments before and slid it into the lock in the bathroom door handle with a slight rumble. He twisted the knob forcefully and opened it suddenly, perhaps a little eagerly, and stalked into the room.

"Heero?" Wufei asked when he received no reply.

Heero stuck his head out of the bathroom window and looked around, including up and down, then cursed sharply in Japanese, a frown dominating his face.

By this time, Wufei had stood up and leaned against the doorframe, alert and ready for action. "What's wrong?" There was a hint of urgency in his voice.

"Duo's gone." Heero replied quietly without moving his head back into the house.

"What?" Wufei asked, dumbfounded.

Heero pulled his head back inside, locked eyes with Wufei, and said clearly, "Duo is gone."

"No, I heard you the first time," Wufei clarified, "what I mean is, what?" Then, realizing how poorly worded his question was, he sputtered and searched for a new way to ask.

"Duo, gone, climbed out the bathroom window just a moment ago." Heero further explained in broken phrases.

This stopped Wufei's stuttering immediately. "What!? Where? Why?"

"I don't know." Heero flatly replied with no trace of emotion in his face or voice, but his eyes blazed invisibly in the dark room.

"Maxwell" Wufei growled. "When I get my hands on him"

"It's my shift."

"What?"

"Hn. My shift, get some sleep. Duo has done this every night. He'll be back in the morning."

Wufei looked at Heero oddly, and then retreated from the room without another word.

:::

From the top of his perch on the roof, Duo had seen Heero poke his head out of the window. He silently cursed; knowing that Heero must have seen him sneak out.

Duo looked around and sighed. [["_Oh well. Doctor's orders_"]] He removed his shirt, his coiled muscles softly reflecting light from the city below. Duo might not have appreciated much else of what Arwel did for him, but whatever the medical staff did to build up his flight muscles looked damned good on the rest of him. The chilly air blew softly across his skin, pulling out goose bumps as it passed. [["_It's almost Halloween Almost my birthday_"]] He absently thought, beginning to yearn for the warmth of his wings. Duo shifted aside the linnen and gauze that he wore to please the other pilots, arched his back, and prepared to release them. Duo loved this time of night. Somehow it made everything feel new. He stretched a few strange muscles and felt two sharp pricks as his claws pierced his skin, and a faint slicing sensation as they drew two vertical red lines on either side of his spine. Even after having repeated this exercise so many times in the past week or so, this part never failed to creep Duo out. It almost felt like having two knives dragged down his back, but the sensation was so faint due to the lack of pain receptors in that area that it was almost unreal.

With slits in his skin, the pressure in his back was hard to keep from escaping, and Duo shuddered as he held his wings in for only a moment, just to see what it was like. Then his back bulged, bowed, and those wings were released in one sharp, explosive motion. It was enough to push Duo forward, and them make him stagger back as the initial momentum wore off and the appendages threatened to topple him over. Duo pulled with his stomach muscles and leaned forward to prevent it. Nearly half of his weight was in those wings, which truly wasn't saying much. He fluttered them slightly, instinctively as his healing organs closed the holes in his back seamlessly. When it was done, he curled his wings around his shoulders and over his chest. The chill air was seeping under his feathers and causing little muscles at their bases to pull them and make them puff up, much like what was happening to the little hairs all over his body elsewhere.

He nearly decided to just stay on the roof and not go flying that night, but suddenly his pager went off. It vibrated in his pocket and he reached for it. [["_Who could have found my number?_"]] For a moment he feared that it was Heero, but as he glanced at the softly glowing green display, all those thoughts were rushed from his body and replaced by a strange feeling in his stomach as if he had swallowed his own feathers, or quite a bit of hot air. Hilde's cell phone number winked up at him from the screen just before the light turned off. [["_Hilde? What's she doing paging me?_"]] Resolving to find out, he looked for a clear path to take off and breathed in deeply.

The first night at the safe house hadn't gone very well. He had to sneak out early that night during Quatre's shift and be back by 3 AM for his own. Trowa's shift had been in-between. While climbing the fire escape after releasing his wings, a rung had broken off near the top of the building and Duo had fallen onto the balcony. Faced with no other choice, he jumped and attempted to fly from the balcony, but found it far more difficult than he had anticipated. Flying was instinctual, but it didn't help much when he was still trying to learn to flap both of his wings at the same time. Unintentionally, he flew for the first time after first running into his fair share of things. Despite the various purple bruises he had acquired that night, he still found it strangely fulfilling.

The second night, Wufei's shift was first, followed by Heero's and Quatre's. Duo snuck out toward the middle of Wufei's shift and returned near the middle of Quatre's shift so Heero was less likely to catch him, and Quatre and Wufei were less likely to be paying attention. Flying had been exhilarating that night. He had experimented with gliding, but it was difficult in the chilly night air. Flapping for altitude was tiring, but there had been a pleasant flush in his face and a healthy sheen of sweat on his chest by the time he returned and landed on the roof. He had felt guilty during the day about acting so recklessly, but pleasurable thoughts of the skies above the city quickly replaced the nagging of his conscience with a pleasant buzz in his ears.

Now it was his third night out, and he had work to do. The pilots hadn't yet acquired a vehicle (no reason to attract the attention of the police), and Duo wouldn't have wanted to take one anyway.

He rubbed his shoulders against the cool night air, shuffled his hands together, took a running start, and leaped from the building, the balcony several stories below. He extended his wings in mid-jump and caught the air, then pushed it beneath him in a powerful down stroke. He clutched his jacket close to his chest in his hands and it rattled against the breeze. Duo resisted the urge to extend his arms to help balance him as he entered a particularly cold stream of air. He wobbled around a bit until he glided back into a warmer patch, then flapped his wings several times to regain the altitude he had lost in the chilly downdraft.

Soon he was flapping high above even the tallest buildings in that residential area, though not without a fair share of effort. He briefly wondered what Heero would think of flying like this, and smiled. He would probably hate it, flying without rocket engines or heavy artillery

Duo banked east and followed the road, searching for a convenience store so he could find a pay phone. It wasn't like him to keep Hilde waiting too long.

:::

[End Chapter 6]

A/N: Sorry about the lateness. I actually got this done months ago, but I wanted to cut off the chapter where I had originally intended, and then I just kept inserting scenes and elaborating and making it longer... So what was once chapter 6 will now become chapters 6, 7, and 8. I hope the wait was worth it!


	7. Chapter 7: Suspicions of Betrayal

Chapter 07 – Suspicions of Betrayal

****

"I'll tell her after the war, maybe."

_Ittalics_ denote thought, except in cases of emphasis.

A.N.: If my formatting does funny things again on either FF.net or MM.org, I'm not going to bother to go back to change it. Sorry for any inconvenience. Go to mediaminer and search for SilentWillow920 for a version without formatting mistakes.

:::

About forty-five minutes after gliding off the top of the roof of the safe house, Duo gingerly touched down on top of a low commercial building, and then fluttered carefully down into the messy alleyway behind it. He drew in his wings then donned his jacket and swept his fingers through his wind-blown bangs, trying to smooth them. He was still breathing hard as he peered around the corner to see if anyone was looking. Duo was watching for Hilde more than anyone else; she would be far more suspicious of seeing him come out from behind a building than a random drunk would be. Seeing no one, he walked out front, took several steadying breaths, and then walked inside the convenience store where he had said he'd pick up Hilde.

He quickly located the surveillance devices and was careful to keep his face hidden as e walked toward the familiar loud woman, who was trying to have a conversation with a harassed-looking storekeeper. She saw Duo immediately and practically bounced up to him.

"There you are, Duo! About time you showed up; I can't understand a word this guy is saying, 'cept something that sounds like 'hole-a'."

Duo grinned, his first real smile in days. "It's great to see you too, Hilde." He laughed.

She did too. "So, shall we get out of here?"

"Let's blow this place." At Hilde's questioning glance, he just laughed and left through the door.

As soon as they were outside, Hilde wrapped her arms around Duo and drew him into a warm hug. He was surprised by the sudden gesture, but returned it a moment later. Hilde's scent reminded him of the alpine forest, chocolate, almonds, and peppermint. "It really is great to see you, Duo." She told him genuinely.

Normally Duo would have a witty comment for just such an occasion, but a curious warm sensation bubbled up in his stomach and seemed to trip up his brain. "I, uh, um…" he stammered, then wished he had just kept his mouth shut.

Hilde laughed.

Suddenly feeling a very uncharacteristic need to distract himself from these fluttering sensations, Duo asked seriously, "So, why did 'ja page me anyway? What brings you here?"

He watched her closely guarded expression with interest. "Well, you know, I was on Earth with nothing much planned, and I heard news of a Gundam attack in Europe, figured I'd just follow the trail of destruction and find you…" she told him in a joking, singsong voice, but her eyes told another story.

Duo's mouth twisted into a superior grin. "You're a long way from Germany." He pointed out.

Hilde blanched just as their walk took them outside of the illumination radius of a street lamp and, she would have been saved by that fact if she hadn't allowed a bit too much offense to creep into her voice. "Well, I didn't exactly think you'd be stupid enough to stick around there! And here you are anyway, so ha!"

Duo laughed at her red face as they passed beneath another street lamp and jokingly stuck his tongue out at her. "So here I am! Nya!"

"Nya!" she stuck her tongue out as well, stopped, placed her hands on her hips, and mock glared. Duo followed suit with a flourish. They stood there about two seconds before they both burst out laughing.

A Spanish man shouted something probably obscene from a high window above a closed shop and threw a piece of trash down, missing badly. As the crumpled can rattled across the sidewalk, the last of the two teens' giggles died away. Hilde noticed with a flush that somewhere in between, she had fallen onto Duo's chest and he had supported her. As they met each others' eyes, she jumped back and held her arms behind her back nervously. Duo seemed to be in a similar state of disquiet.

"Duo, I…" Hilde began.

"Let's head to the safe house." Duo cut her off. "From there, we'll secure another location for you to stay." He smiled kindly, but it was a guarded expression. His eyes were a whirl of confusion.

…As were her own.

:::

"Ha ha! And when we-…!"

"Yeah, and then you shoved it up-…!"

"And the PVC pipe-…!"

"But it was too big-…!"

By the time Duo and Hilde reached the door to the studio apartment safe house early that morning, they were in fits of laughter, and Duo's side felt as if it would burst from the sheer hilarity of the things they were reminiscing about.

He reached for the doorknob, but it swung open before he had a chance to turn it. Four serious faces crowded the narrow hallway on the other side.

"Oh, hey guys, guess who decided to show up?" Duo said, grinning.

"I was about to say the same thing." Wufei growled scoldingly. "Where have you been all night? Is this what you snuck off for?"

Hilde saved Duo from having to decide between lying and self-preservation. "Yes, actually, it is." She said with just a hint of offense.

Quatre, ever the naive one, incredulously asked, "All night!?"

Red flooded Duo's face as other interpretations for that question filled his mind. He sniggered, realizing that he would have teased himself for how this looked, had he been able.

Again, Hilde saved him. "I was really far away, actually, and yanno, cars aren't as easy to jack as they used to be…." She tried to keep her voice from wavering as she suddenly wondered just how Duo could have gotten to her as fast as he first had without jacking a car or some kind of motor vehicle. Then again, it seemed that the braided boy was always full of surprises. She supposed that it wouldn't be nearly as fun to work with him once she discovered them all….

"Hn." Heero said plainly, then locked eyes with Duo. Surprisingly, Heero was the first to turn away. He walked back to his room and shut the door behind him with finality. Duo wondered what that was all about.

After a moment of uneasy silence, Quatre nervously asked, "Not that it's much of my business, or that I was really listening…" he sputtered and mumbled, "but what were you two talking about before you came in?"

Suddenly realizing just what it sounded like they were talking about, Hilde and Duo burst out laughing again. When Duo calmed down a bit, he spoke to Quatre, still with a bit of a laugh in his voice. "We were talking about a time right after we first met, when I was trying to fix a mobile suit that I had stolen, using unconventional tools."

Hilde sniggered again.

Quatre's blush faded and he looked down. "…Oh," he merely said.

:::

Heero, of course, had insisted on getting right to work on securing some other place for Hilde to live, but that still left her and Duo plenty of time to get caught up.

Duo was working in his room at his desk on a recent project with his back to the door when Hilde snuck in from behind and launched into an all-out tickle assault. The only time when Duo could be caught so unaware was when he was concentrating on a project… or watching TV.

Their wild game soon landed Duo on the floor gasping for breath as Hilde leaned over him. "Gotcha!" she teased.

"Ah… ahah…" Duo panted, then pretended to be shot. "Aaargh, ya got me…" he curled up and pretended to writhe in agony, and then when he was sure that Hilde was significantly incapacitated with giggles, he launched at her and returned the tickle attack.

Hilde shrieked ant tried to squirm away, but Duo was right there. From the room directly below them, Wufei shook his head, muttered, "Maxwell…" with contempt, and quickly returned to his reading.

Duo continued to mercilessly tickle Hilde until he had her pinned to the floor. As he stated into her smiling, teary eyes, he suddenly came to a startling revelation. His fingers halted their work, and he mentally reproached himself, "_What the hell am I doing!?_"

"…Duo?" Hilde's giggles had calmed down. "What's wrong? Why'd 'ja stop?"

"…Nothing, Hilde, I just remembered something." He paused long enough to get up off the floor. "I have to go do… something. It's that… thing I … forgot to do." He walked quickly out the door without looking back, his face ashen.

"Duo?" Hilde called after him, but gained no response.

"_Supid, stupid, stupid!_"Duo beat himself up over his actions after having locked himself in the bathroom. He sat with a sour expression on his face as he sat on the closed toilet. His wings were curled behind him in an uncomfortable position, almost too big to fit in the bathroom now. He would have to think of somewhere else to let them out soon. "_I can't get involved in a relationship now!_"He grabbed one hand with the other to stop it from shaking, but just ended up perpetuating the problem. Craving something to busy his hands with, he reached to the side and began preening his feathers, expertly running his fingers through them, fingers constructed for delicate work. "_It wouldn't be fair to Hilde, it would compromise security…_"He paused, lifting his hands to remove a single loose feather. "_Great, now I'm molting…._"Duo stuffed the feather in the pocket of his jacket, which lay nearby, then sighed. "_It wouldn't be fair of me to keep secrets from her, and if she finds out then Heero will, and then all the pilots will… and not even one person is supposed to know. …People do have a history of destroying things that they don't understand…_"

A quiet knock on the bathroom door woke Duo from his reverie. "Duo?" It was Hilde. "Are you all right in there?"

"Yeah, just fine!" Duo called back.

"You've been in there for fifteen minutes already! Did'ja fall in?" She asked with humor.

"Nah, but I'll be out in a minute!" he replied, unable to think up a retort. "_I'll tell her after the war, maybe._"Duo thought as he flushed the toilet to create enough noise to hide the sounds his wings made as he clumsily turned and brought them back in. He turned the sink on for about a minute as he searched around for stray feathers, stuffed those he found in his pockets, got his fingers wet, turned off the water, dried his hands, and then fixed his hair quickly in the mirror. Opening the door quickly inward, he found Hilde's beaming face on the other side.

"Honestly, Duo, you spend more time in there than me! Are we having a beauty contest here?"

"If we were, I'd win." Duo retorted, sticking his tongue out.

Hilde laughed and Duo cracked an impish grin, resulting in a crazy, lop-sided expression that only made Hilde laugh harder. "Not with that face, you wouldn't!"

"What do you mean? Of course I'd win with my face! I'm gorgeous!"

The ensuing argument might have involved the entire house, was well as gratuitous discussion of Quatre in a lacy pink bikini ("Oh, my!") it Heero hadn't descended the steps at that exact moment. It briefly passed through Duo's mind to wonder what he had been doing upstairs when both his room and the bathroom were on the first floor, but he didn't worry about it.

"A location has been secured. It's time for you to go, Hilde." Heero told her plainly.

Despite Hilde's riotous complaints and Duo's own feebly humorous ones, Duo was secretly glad.

:::

Duo landed on the roof less than an hour before dawn the next morning in that gray period just before the sky would begin to flood color back into the world. He silently prayed that no one heard him land as he pulled his wings back in and readjusted the clean linen and gauze that he wore around where his injuries had been to please the other pilots. He slid his black shirt and jacket back on as well. The braided boy was breathing heavily and smelled of sweat and wood smoke from helping Hilde set up the wood burner in the small, impoverished house that she had been unceremoniously dumped into early the day before.

He climbed into the building from the door on the roof, which he had left unlocked for himself and carefully made his way down the stairwell to the pilots' floor, removing traces of his presence as he went along. Then again, he realized with humor that the shabby state of the halls as he climbed further down did well to hide his passing, so much so that his own expert attempts did little more than make his footprints completely disappear even in the dust and carpeting.

When he reached the door to his apartment, he still hadn't caught his breath, so he leaned against the wall and took in several deep, steadying breaths before breaching the door and slipping silently through unto the nearly light-less apartment.

The light switched on.

Duo's dark-adapted pupils contracted as the shock of the bright light hit them, and he flinched away reflexively.

"Where have you been." Heero asked so forcefully, so monotonously, that for a moment Duo couldn't figure out if it was a question or not.

"Ah, Maxwell, did you forget that we were starting early today?" Wufei grinned maliciously like a cat toying with a particularly fat, juicy mouse.

Duo's eyes slowly readjusted to the light and he relaxed only marginally enough to see that _all four_ of his fellow pilots were before him in the hall. "_Not good._"he registered vaguely, then blinked.

"Duo, where were you? We've been up for an hour already worrying!" Quatre supplied next. Duo suddenly felt guilty, thinking about the treatment that Heero, Wufei, and Trowa must have received when Quatre had realized that Duo wasn't in the apartment.

"Why did you go out there?" Trowa surprised him by asking next. "You know you could have easily exposed us." His voice contained a few more non-verbal cues than Heero's, but still carried the brunt of its force in the lack of emotion and near silence of it.

Duo risked a quick glance at Heero, who only stared emotionlessly back and grunted a quick, "Hn."

"What were you thinking!?" Wufei demanded Duo's attention.

Duo's mouth hung open a moment as he tried to think of a way to diffuse the situation without lying.

Mercifully or perhaps not, Heero interrupted the strained silence by stating coldly, "Every night since we came here, you've done this." He paused almost infinitesimally. "Why."

In an effort to keep from stammering like an idiot, Duo slowly raised a hand to scratch the top of his head, keeping it in sight the entire time to draw of his friends' soldier instincts. His fingers brushed the small 7mm handgun that he kept hidden at the top of his braid, but he ignored that sensation. Then, he put on his best "I'm Duo Maxwell, I'm so charming" grin and laughed, "Needed some exercise, ok?"

Though it was a good excuse, it left the boys confused. Quatre approached Duo with concern clear in his face. "Duo, what's wrong? You've been acting strange ever since… ever since your surgery. If anything is bothering you, you need to tell us. That mission almost ended in disaster because you insisted that you were all right!" It seemed like it took a lot for Quatre to say that.

Though it hurt him to do so, Duo shrugged Quatre off. "You worry too much, Q-ball. They checked me out, and I'm just fine," then with a devious grin, he added, "…just hungry. Got anything to eat?"

Cruelly, Wufei pointed out, "You missed breakfast, Maxwell."

Duo pouted, looking broken hearted, and no one save maybe Trowa noticed as Heero slipped silently back to his room.

Taking pity on the braided boy, Quatre relented, "Take something quickly, we need to get to work."

That was all it took to lift Duo's spirits again. He nodded happily and practically skipped to the kitchen, humming randomly the entire way.

"If he starts singing that disgraceful music again-…" Wufei seethed, catching the opening riffs to a song that he had been playing far too loudly two days ago, but was too late as Duo launched into a song, one that he had apparently only recently become enamored with.

Before he even got a few coherent words out, Wufei whirled around and bellowed, "MAXWELL!"

:::

Later on that same day, Duo sat quietly in one corner of the large divided room in the middle of many seemingly haphazardly strewn white objects, most of them papers. He wore a heavy frown on his face and a single battered white feather between his fingers. The CD player next to him had been playing the same rock CD for hours, and was set to a low volume ever since Wufei mad him turn it down. Duo always had a habit of staring into blank space when he thought no one was looking, but recently it had seemed to intensify.

"_They shouldn't have been able to catch me._"Duo insisted as his thoughts wandered to the scene in the hallway that morning. "_Not even Heero should have noticed my coming and going. I'm usually so much better than this. Damn it, he's caught me every night. Why didn't he say anything? …Why didn't I do anything?_"His eyelids lowered a fraction of an inch more, and his frown deepened almost imperceptibly. "_…Maybe I really wanted someone to catch me. Maybe I really want… someone to… know._"He blinked without hanging his expression. "_But who am I kidding? I couldn't do that, could I? Well, they might understand…_"Duo screwed his eyes shut and bit back a frustrated growl. "_But I promised that I wouldn't tell anyone. After all, I have just as much to fear from… outsiders… as them back in that big crater city do._"

Duo paused then. He had never truly thought of his friends as outsiders before. They had always been the closest thing to true friends he had during the war, his only equals. This sudden alienation (Duo congratulated the creators of the English language for their ironic choice of words) carried with it a feeling of isolation so powerful that it still felt surreal. No matter how hard Duo tried to convince himself that the mission was his first priority, he found himself inevitably distracted by this problem and the need to sort it out. "_I have to try harder in the future, I can't let the others become suspicious. I'm almost one-fourth done with the two months this is supposed to last. I can separate from them for a while, do a few solo missions, and be back like… nothing happened…_"But something had happened, and Duo knew that no matter how hard he tried, he could never forget that. His head slipped into his cupped hands, covering his eyes as if the light hurt them. "_Solo, I'm so sorry. I just don't know what to do. You always told me to take care of myself and follow what my heart and soul wants. …Well, I don't know what I want. I'm not even sure if I need what I think I do. Why can't you be here to tell me what I need to do? You always made things sound so simple, even when they weren't…._"

Trowa silently strode up behind Quatre, who had been watching Duo through gaps in the sheets, half the large room away. "How long has he been there?" he asked in that low, almost silent voice of his that was both clear and deep.

"Since he came back this morning." Quatre replied. He loved that voice; it promised safety, forgiveness, security, and a sort of deep, fragile ambiguity. He wished to hear it more often, but supposed for a moment that if he did, then it would spoil the effect. Quatre's eyebrows pursed as he sighed, bringing his mind back to where his heart told him that it needed to be. "Trowa, I'm so worried." He told the tall European in a near whisper so Duo wouldn't even hear their voices over his music. "He's been acting strange since that escort mission. He's just not acting like himself anymore."

"Do you think perhaps that his injury might still be bothering him?" Trowa supplied without any real conviction.

"No, his physical reactions aren't hampered in the slightest. " Quatre analyzed, thinking back to their battle in Germany with the barest shudder. "Actually, his movements are smoother than before. He just seems… detached, if that makes sense. He's normally so quick and adaptive, but recently he seems unable to concentrate. …And through Wufei would probably disagree, he's too quiet. He's not even working on a project and he's not humming or fidgeting or anything-… ok, so he has been twirling that feather for the past half-hour. Do you think he suffered some sort of mental complication?"

"He has been acting strange." Trowa agreed. "He hasn't actively sought to annoy Wufei or Heero even on the ride out of the desert. He seems as competent as ever during battle, however."

"…Yes." Quatre sighed again, remembering the calculated risk taking and precise offense of the Deathscythe Gundam. "However, he hasn't reported being at Deathscythe's repairs yet."

"If his mental abilities have been compromised-…" Trowa began in a warning tone.

"…He'll be ejected from all future missions as a Gundam pilot, for his own safety." Quatre finished for Trowa. "Knowing Duo, he'll probably just steal Deathscythe again to keep anyone else from piloting it, and go on self-appointed missions. He'll get himself killed doing that."

For a few awkward, contemplative moments, silence stretched between the two as the reality of what exactly they were discussing sank in. The song on Duo's all-important CD player changed to one that the pilots immediately recognized as being short from the many times the play list had already cycled that day.

"We should take him to Sally if it gets too bad. For now… we need to confront him about sneaking out at night. He puts us all at risk by doing that." Quatre decided.

"And then there's the question of where he goes, what he does. It was his information, remember, that nearly caused our last mission to end in disaster, not to mention fail."

"What are you suggesting?" Quatre asked, suddenly fearful of where the discussion was leading them.

"I'm not sure, but it's entirely possible-…"

The cherubic boy's eyes widened as he suddenly realized what Trowa was trying to say, and he finished the sentence for him, "…that Duo isn't Duo."

Quatre suddenly received the distinct impression of the blade of a guillotine falling as Trowa bowed his head in affirmation.

Tentatively, Quatre admitted with a mirroring nod, "I've thought of that as well…" Then quicker, he sputtered, "But let's not jump to conclusions! The fact remains, we must confront Duo. He won't lie to us… if it's him." Quatre almost kicked himself for adding that last part.

"And if it's not him?" Trowa advocated, not missing a punch, "How will we know?"

Quatre took the moment to peer back through the space between the many sheets at Duo's brooding form, twirling the battered, abused feather again. "I… don't know." He sighed. "I need to take a walk."

Trowa nodded. "I'll check on Wufei. He was entirely too pleased with himself after taking only two minutes to get Duo to turn down the stereo's volume."

Trowa turned and left, heading for the far wall by the stairs. However, as soon as Quatre walked outside onto the balcony, instead of entering Wufei's room, he climbed the staircase to the second floor. He quickly checked to see that Duo was still preoccupied before slipping into Duo's room, which neighbored his own.

The first thing that Trowa noticed was a small, egg-shaped device sitting on the desk amidst various spare parts and tools. When he compared it to the drawing he found on yellow scratchpad paper next to it, it looked just about complete. It didn't seem all that important; Duo had shown the pilots his new invention earlier when they had asked about it, so Trowa doubted it held any secrets.

He began his search by opening Duo's closet. It was quite bare, and Trowa didn't find anything but wires and various projects that Duo had long since completed and shown them. Trowa made a mental note to check them for tracking devices later when he had more time.

He found only two CD's in Duo's "important" bag under his bed, various guns, most with modifications, various types of ammo, mostly silicon bullets but some rare lead ones and some filled with liquids as well. Trowa remembered Duo telling them about the poison and charges in these special bullets. The ones with the poison were meant to shatter and deliver a quick acting sleep agent, causing a beautiful wound and making it look like a kill, but just rendering the victim unconscious for a few hours. The other bullets were filled with a thin, sticky, conductive liquid that hardened after stringing out following the impact, and delivered a powerful electric shock with an EMP device in the base of the bullet, triggered by the impact. In a silenced weapon, these were highly useful for taking out mechanical targets at a distance. Trowa had only caught Duo use one on people to quickly take out a group. The effectiveness of the ammo was horrifying, and that had made Trowa suddenly glad that the bullets ere so expensive and time-consuming to create.

Most of what was in Duo's bag were broken parts of various mechanical and computer bits, and Trowa couldn't find anything wrong with that. Notes on his other projects and theories were scattered around, and other than a few food wrappers, most of the drawers on the desk contained nothing.

Only one of the drawers was locked. Trowa was about to conclude that Duo probably kept the key on him when he discovered the glistening hunk of metal underneath his pillow. He inserted the key, twisted the lock, pulled out the drawer, and discovered… feathers?

Trowa heard a clank as someone began to climb the spiraling metal stairs and he nearly jumped. He quickly closed the drawer, re-locked it, returned the key to its hiding spot, and quickly, nimbly, and silently slunk out of Duo's room and into his, where he quietly closed the door and listened through the grate between his and Duo's room.

Sure enough, it was Duo who had climbed the stairs and entered his room. There was a bit of shuffling, then Duo unlocked, opened, and closed the one locked drawer, and tinkered with the thing on his desk. He only did that for a few minutes, and after straining to hear him for so long, Trowa jumped when Duo shouted, "Hey, guys, I'm going to get to the repairs! I'll be back in about four hours!" There was another rustle; Duo had grabbed his jacket.

"Take someone with you, Maxwell!" Wufei advised him strongly.

"Nah, I think I'll be fine on my own. "He stalked out of the room and climbed down the stairs, and Wufei came out of his own room.

"Don't hijack a car, Maxwell. We don't want to draw attention." Wufei continued from his doorway as Duo passed by.

"Hey, it might draw attention when _you_ jack cars, but you're talking to one Mr. Duo Maxwell here, 'fei!" Trowa found it odd that Duo would word things as such. "I'll be just fine."

As Trowa peeked out of his room, he noticed that Duo had a lumpy bag of electrical bits slung over his shoulder. His argument with Wufei didn't last very long; Duo seemed very determined to leave, and after he shut the front door behind him, Trowa snuck back into his room to get a better look around.

:::

"_Duo left…_"Quatre vaguely realized as he walked slowly back and forth across the balcony. Numerous potted plants and vines lined the railing, and Quatre admired the deep green hues of their leaves as he tried to clear his head. He plopped down on the small chair nearby as walking began to grow repetitive, and rested his face in his hands, eyes closed. He was still very sorry for ever admitting what he though to Trowa. It was a cruel thing to say, or even think, and cruel was one thing that Quatre was not.

" '_I never went anywhere._' "Quatre remembered Duo having told him at the beginning of this crazy series of events. He smiled now, finally getting the joke. Duo had known what he was talking about and tried to diffuse the situation, or at least lighten the mood with humor, as he always tended to do. Now, however…

"_He's been moody._"Quatre reflected. "_His jokes aren't funny, he laughs at things we don't understand…_"Quatre paused. "_…He's been brooding. Something is really bothering him. A spy wouldn't want to draw that kind of attention… but by observing Duo, this is the side of him that a spy would get to know…_"Quatre only managed to frustrate himself. No matter how much he tried to eliminate the possibility from his mind, it just seemed more and more likely that Duo was already gone from among them.

Quatre sighed and opened his eyes. Something pearly and white rested among the plant leaves in front of him. Curiously, he reached down and lifted the shiny feather up to his face and twirled it. It certainly was an entertaining pastime…

His gaze shifted and Quatre spotted another feather a few feet away and walked over to pick it up. This one was long and black, and most of its length was fuzz instead of a flat plane of fibers. He swished it through the air slowly and watched the light filaments bend back. Quatre suddenly wondered what sort of bird this could possibly come from, then peered closer to the first feather, and noticed something strange. The fibers seemed almost scaly. Quatre had learned a little about birds in school and had played idly with a few real feathers during his short stay on Earth, and he was pretty sure that no birds he'd ever heard of had feathers like this.

Quatre looked around. He was mildly surprised to see several more among the plants. Curious, he moved around to pick them up.

:::

About an hour later, both Heero and Wufei were sitting at the small table in the kitchen. Wufei was doing paperwork, and even though he normally hated this kind of work, he wore a satisfied smirk on his face. Heero was working on his laptop, as always, when Quatre came in and dropped an armload of feathers on the table. Both working boys looked up.

"Hn." Heero asked without asking.

"Honestly, Quatre, if you want to make crafts, do it someplace where the rest of us aren't trying to work." Wufei flicked a feather off the top of his work.

"I found all these on the balcony." Now that he was inside, telling the others of his probably irrelevant discovery seemed silly, but it was too late to back out now without losing a great deal of his friends' respect. "I was wondering if, just for fun, one of you might be able to tell me what bird they come from."

Wufei smirked. "You should be more interested in your Gundam's maintenance than some stupid bird's feathers."

At that precise moment, Trowa walked in from the front hallway. No one had heard him close the front door. "They aren't."

"What?" Quatre asked softly.

"They aren't bird feathers, or at least not any of the kind of birds that we know." He placed a thick dinosaur book on the table, open to a picture of a colorful, scaly bird. This confused Quatre, and though he would never admit it, Wufei too. "They resemble the scales of reptiles, the only like to which I found is this entry on Archaeopteryx." He flipped the page to show a detailed picture of a fossil imprint of one of the feathers of the ancient bird next to a diagram of its bones and various captions on the entries.

"Trowa, what do you mean by this?" Quatre asked, unable to follow.

Trowa shrugged. Apparently he didn't know either. "The feathers aren't mechanical, and if they're synthetic, they're awfully convincing, but maybe this will intrigue you more:" he pulled a handful of feathers from his picket and placed them on the table next to Quatre's pile. No one could tell the difference between the two sets, "Duo has been collecting them."

Quatre cocked an eyebrow. "Why? What reason could he possibly have to do a thing like that?"

"That, I don't know. I was hoping Duo might be able to enlighten us on that subject." Trowa replied.

Suddenly, Quatre realized what Trowa must have done to find this out. "Wait, you went through Duo's things? Trowa! How could you?"

Trowa just shrugged as if it didn't matter. "I was searching for clues, trying to find out anything I could before jumping to conclusions. This looks like a clue to me; they were in his only locked drawer."

"Duo has been acting strangely." Heero said in a tone that in itself added, 'and only that', like that alone wasn't worth their attention.

If Wufei had been a more expressive person, he would have rolled his eyes. As it was, he crossed his arm over his chest. "I don't understand how Maxwell's silence bothers you. It's a blessing." He told Quatre and Trowa.

Reluctantly, Quatre spoke up with a sigh in his voice. "We don't want to jump to conclusions, but it's entirely possible that Duo… Duo…" he couldn't seem to get it out, and turned to Trowa.

"Isn't Duo." Trowa finished for him firmly and without hesitation.

"Hn." Heero asked without any change to his tone of voice. It was difficult to determine what he was trying to communicate by that. The light behind his eyes seemed closed off.

"What?" Wufei asked seriously.

Quatre fidgeted nervously as he elaborated. "…Professor J's orders to escort weapons to that hidden base weren't well-explained. Without those details, we have no leads to follow as to what exactly convinced J to assign that mission. It could very well have been a skillfully placed setup by OZ to lure away one of our own. They've already used your information, Trowa and Heero, to program Mobile Dolls to fight like us. It would be unerringly simple to train one soldier for the purpose of replacing one of us, even with limited data, and then have that soldier implant an intelligent autopilot in Deathscythe based on Duo's fighting data. Plastic surgery and hair implants could take care of his physical description."

"And wouldn't it be fitting for the God of Death to brood like that?" Trowa surprised everyone with his insight, especially Quatre.

The cherubic boy made a face and wrung his hands as he continued. "…I really hope, for Duo's sake, that he just experienced some sort of personal epiphany while he was in that hospital, but it's entirely possible that the real Duo Maxwell could be sitting in a dark room, systematically being…" Quatre swallowed hard as his voice rose in pitch and forced it back down, "…tortured and questioned while a decoy is stationed here to throw off our missions, report secret information, and… buy time."

"It's not true." Heero immediately said, glaring in Quatre and Trowa's general direction.

That startled everyone. Trowa narrowed his eyes in curiosity. "…How would you know?"

"Hn," was Heero's inconclusive answer.

"With all the time you've been left alone, it's entirely possible that _you_ might have been planted among us to thwart suspicion." Trowa glared.

Heero glared right back.

Quatre placed a calming hand on Trowa's shoulder and the teen slowly relaxed. "…Trust is often the first casualty of war. I'm sorry, Trowa, Wufei, Heero, I'm sorry I brought this up."

"Still, the fact remains," Trowa continued calmly, "Duo's strange behavior can't go uninvestigated. We need solid evidence that he is or is not who we think he is, and if he is, we need to find out what's bothering him and fix the problem before his instability begins to pose a threat to us all."

Out of the other pilots' sight, Heero fingered a small white feather, similar to those in the pile, that he had found earlier. He sighed internally. "I'll tun a quick scan of Deathscythe's programming and hardware." He offered, then stood and exited without waiting for a response, not that he needed one.

:::

Minutes later Heero drove up to where he new Duo's Gundam to be, and was mildly surprised to see Duo working diligently. Heero noticed briefly that Duo must have shed his shirt—possibly because of the afternoon heat—and there was a distinct lack of another vehicle in the area. Heero's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly as he moved toward the prone Gundam's cockpit.

Duo only noticed him when the stoic boy climbed up on top of the Gundam. His concentration was broken by Heero's foot passing inches in front of his face. Duo flashed him a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes, and spoke with a falsely cheerful voice, "Yo, Hee-buddy. What's up?" 'Yo'? Duo wasn't normally a 'yo' kind of person.

"Hn." Heero responded noncommittally as he hooked his laptop up to Deathscythe's computer system. He types on a few keys, and had already hacked in by the fifth keystroke.

Narrowing his eyes, Duo imitated Quatre's tone of voice as he mock-scolded his almost emotionless friend. "You're not even going to _ask_ if you can take a look? How rude!"

Mildly annoyed, Heero relented, "Hnn. May I."

"Sure buddy, you don't even need to ask!" Duo laughed cheerfully.

"Hn. I didn't." Heero barely responded and continued his search.

"Seriously though, what'cha lookin' for? Maybe I can help you find it." Duo asked as he peered over.

"Hn." Heero said inconclusively. Do couldn't tell if it was a 'yes', a 'no', or an 'I really don't give a damn, I'm just doing it because I can', 'hn'. Heero shifted away as Duo tried to win a glimpse, so the braided boy flopped back down where he had just been sitting.

"…Or not." Duo scratched the back of his head and his fingers brushed a few random objects that he kept stored in his braid. "You know, Heero, it really takes more than a one word vocabulary to hold a meaningful conversation."

"You do enough talking for the both of us." Heero replied cruelly.

Duo's eyes widened. He felt put-off, but at the same time amazed by Heero's response. "…Was that a joke? From Heero stone-up-his-ass Yuy?"

"Duo."

"Yeah?"

"Shut up."

Duo sighed and leaned back. "Riiiiiiight."

:::

Heero returned within the hour after downloading Duo's significant data. It took almost three hours to decode and manually process the information because he was well aware of the viruses that the Gundam scientists had programmed into their systems to discourage or at least delay this sort of hacking from OZ should the Gundams be captured. OZ had long since found ways around them, however, and though it was child's play for Heero, the process was still tedious.

After he was done, he placed the laptop and all his paper calculations on the table in front of the other pilots where they had been busy with discussion of their next mission. "Nothing." He told them. "Duo's fights are his own." Heero brushed a stray feather roughly off the keys of his laptop as it landed.

"And what does that tell us?" Wufei asked harshly.

"It means nothing more than he fights like Duo, and nothing less." Trowa replied quietly.

"Then what should we do?" Quatre asked with a note of fatigue to his tone.

"Confront him." Heero continued. It wasn't a suggestion. "It's almost dinner time, and Duo won't miss a meal."

"If he's Duo." Trowa pointed out sharply.

Hero only gave the barest hint of a shrug as he sat, not wanting to stand out when Duo walked in through the door.

Sure enough, the very moment Heero sat down, Duo opened and closed the door as he walked in humming, a bit disheveled and wind-blown. A few white fuzzy things were poking out of his pockets and he tried in vain to shove them in before leaving the hallway, but failed, shrugged, and kept walking. As he came out from behind the wall separating him from the kitchen, he said cheerfully, "Hey guys! What's for-…" he stopped abruptly, eyes going wide as he spotted the pile of feathers on the table. "What the-…"

"Duo, what's been going on?" Trowa interrupted him. "You've been acting strangely for quite a while now. And… we have reason to believe that you aren't truly yourself."

If it was physically possible for Duo's eyes to go any wider, they did. "Wait a second, not myself? Who else could I be, Tro-man?"

Trowa cringed at the nickname, one that Duo had used so often before the fateful mission that had led to this.

"Though I don't mind that you aren't constantly bothering me," Wufei covered for Trowa, "we have reason to believe that you are an OZ spy." That was Wufei all right, never one for the subtle approach.

Duo sputtered, dumbfounded for an instant. "Wha-… what!? How the hell did you come up with that one!? What an insult!"

Quatre wrung his hands as he spoke sadly, "Duo, I don't want to believe it, but your recent behavior has been too strange to ignore." He looked to the feathers on the table and picked one up, twirling it near the edge of the table. "I found these feathers all over the balcony, and Trowa found more in your room. Why have you been collecting them?"

"Wait, you went through my stuff!?" Duo shouted. The pilots had never heard him so outraged toward anyone but the Ozzies. "How the hell could you!? I respect _your_ space, Trowa! What the fuck were you doing in mine!? Don't you trust me?"

Trowa crossed his arms and made a sound like, "hmph."

Duo couldn't think of any words strong enough to say to that. He had been angry before, yes, but the source of his anger had never been a force that he couldn't physically fight, or at least stave off with a witty comment or two. Duo's expression grew dark for several long moments as he attempted to reign in a temper that would have impressed even Wufei. His eyes seemed to have lost their luster completely, and without a smile to hide it, the dark rings under and around his eyes gave him a sunken, skeletal look. Several unerringly simple, yet absolutely unacceptable solutions came immediately to mind, and Duo clenched his fists and winced with a sound that was more of a hiss. When he spoke again, his voice was low and serious, but his posture had relaxed, and now he only looked tired. "Trowa, I forgave you for deceiving me, I even forgave you for destroying Deathscythe, but you of all people I thought would understand that my personal space is sacred to me. If you _ever_ pull something like this again, _any_ of you, I-will-leave, and I won't be coming back. I don't care if this is some sort of joke; it's not funny. I've been through a _hell_ of a lot lately, and I've been trying my hardest to help things seem normal around here for the sake of the mission, but I don't need this _bullshit_. I don't care if you thought I was the Easter bunny, that doesn't give you the right-… You have _no right_-…"

Quatre's distress at Duo's anger was apparent in his eyes. "…Duo, I'm sorry-…"

"Don't apologize." Trowa said curtly, and then quickly crossed the threshold while Duo was still surprised and lifted a handful of crushed white feathers from his pocket. "More feathers." He stated seriously as he held the crumpled, scaly white feathers triumphantly. "What are you doing with these?"

Duo curled his upper lip and glared as he grabbed for the feathers, his face growing red and hot. "Give those back!"

Trowa nimbly avoided Duo's wild swipes and stood back.

Duo shoved his hands into his pockets, glared, and hunched his shoulders defensively. "Find, if it means so much to you, keep them. You seem to have quite the collection already, who am I to deny you another addition?" Duo mocked him cruelly, the shadows around his eyes almost black.

Quatre was visibly shaken. He was eerily reminded of Duo on the battlefield and had a sudden irrational fear of him and a desire to hide behind someone.

Meanwhile, Duo was housing an internal battle of his own. "_Well, you got what you wanted,_"a sardonic little voice told him. "_They have you now; you should just leave before the situation requires… alternative action._"Duo didn't like that sardonic little voice, especially as it suggested alternative action in such a maliciously gleeful tone. Duo knew well what that meant.

"_No._"He told himself firmly. "_I can't tell them the truth, but they're still my friends, the best ones I have._"

"_They don't seem to think so._"That malicious little voice replied, relishing every word it spoke. "_Sure they're your… 'best' friends,_"it leered, "_but they're also your only ones, and right now they're just about to throw you to the wolves. Tell me, what sort of _friends_ would do that?_"

"_Shut up._"Duo told the voice. He recognized immediately exactly what part of himself he was arguing with, and he was filled with a horrible sense of dread and shame. Though he tried to convince himself that he was fully in control of his actions, Shinigami was in control of his thoughts, and it became more and more difficult to fight him off every time Shinigami found cause to rise into his conscious mind. "_Shut up, I don't need this right now. I'm not on the battlefield, I don't need to think like I am, I don't want-…_"Duo cut his thoughts off abruptly there, but they still echoed weakly through his mind. "_I don't want them to meet you._"

"_Ah, so now we're at the root of the problem!_"Shinigami laughed triumphantly as a deadly chill spread from Duo's fingers up his arms.

"_No, we're not._"Duo firmly replied. "_And why the hell am I thinking in plural!? Just shut up!_"

"_Well, I wish you'd make up your mind as to whether or not you want me to answer your questions._"Shinigami retorted ruthlessly.

"_Is this how I always sound?_"Duo morbidly thought, then quickly decided, "_You know what?_"

--"_No, why don't you introduce me some time?_"Shinigami thought as the impression of a vicious smirk wove itself into the forefront of Duo'' mind, and made a ghost of an appearance on his face.--

Duo ignored that completely and forced his lips into a frown. "_No, I _don't_ want you answering my questions! I don't want to hear anything out of you unless I'm on the battlefield, so just _shut up_!_"

A thick silence descended over the area of his mind where Shinigami had provoked him from only moments before. The chill in Duo's hands was almost painful, and he resisted the urge to rub them for warmth.

Duo looked up. Not surprisingly, all the pilots were staring at him with expressions more or less akin to confusion, worry, fear, and a range of others. Quatre stood half behind Trowa and peered over to Duo with all of the above and more clearly visible in his eyes.

"Duo, what's going on?" he asked quietly. "If you really are… yourself, you can tell us. This isn't like you, brooding almost constantly, hiding most of the day, and sneaking out at night." Quatre paused, the kind expression on his face growing sad. "Whatever is going on, if you don't want to tell anyone, at least tell me. Duo, you almost died last time you didn't…"

Quatre's pleading look was almost too much for Duo. It seemed to tear a hole through his side through which all of his anger, hostility, outrage, and resistance drained out. How could Duo resist a face like that—no, a person like that, who's only wish was for everyone's happiness except his own? Duo sighed and found that he had to look away. He couldn't bear to even twist the truth when his voice crackled to life again. "…I…"

"Spit it out, Maxwell!" Wufei ordered him impatiently.

"By Allah, Duo! Just tell us!" Quatre begged him, compelling Duo to speak once more.

"…I… can't." Duo choked out, barely above a whisper.

"What!?" Trowa's voice raised itself to a normal inside volume, shouting for him.

That was it. Duo whirled around, fists clenched and eyes blazing as he repeated the truth. "I can't tell you, all right!? I promised that I wouldn't, so I can't! You're my friends, I thought you'd trust me! You have to! You just have to…" His voice failed him in the last few moments.

Wufei was shocked by Duo's outburst, but not so much as not to respond. He fell back into one of his most familiar range of responses. "Well now, I don't see how we can, especially after that outburst."

Duo stared on, dumbfounded. He moved his gaze to Trowa, who refused to meet his eyes, and then looked to Quatre. The meek boy's face was only inches from the tall European's.

"Duo, I want to believe you…" Quatre's words were heartfelt. He still truly wanted to believe that this was Duo that they were talking to, "but honestly, from your words alone, I can't."

"Quatre, it's me!" Duo shouted, then regretted raising his voice to the kind boy and lowered it, losing all of his severity, but none of his desperation. "This is insane. Ask me something only I would know, I swear I am who I am!"

Wufei frowned. "Weren't you listening? We can't trust your words! Anything you might say could have been tortured from the real Duo."

"He would have been easy to crack, all people truly are." Trowa added.

Wufei snorted. "He was half cracked already."

"Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence." Duo sneered sarcastically, that strange dark look twisting his face and revealing that Duo wasn't at all amused by his own comment.

"_Ah, a bitter jest, when the satire lies to near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind…_"Shinigami's voice echoed chillingly through Duo's thoughts with a cynical laugh to its tone.

"_I thought I shut you up._"Duo counterattacked the voice with his own thoughts. Despite the fact that he knew the sardonic voice to be his own, his recent lack of control over his own thoughts was beginning to scare him.

"_The job of satire is to frighten and enlighten._"the voice told him in a tone that was at the same time both flippant and maliciously piercing.

"_Go away._"Duo forcefully thought. "_I don't need to be thinking like this right now._"

"Trowa, we still need solid evidence. We can't say either way until then." Quatre advocated in a warning tone for Duo against the others' paranoid tendencies.

Trowa shook his head, interpreting Quatre's words as a need for medical tests. "The only medical files he has are at that hidden base, where the trouble started. We only have our own memories to go by."

"That's it!" Quatre shouted suddenly with glee.

"What's it?" Wufei asked.

"Duo's wound!" Quatre explained, sure that this would finally prove that indeed, Duo was standing right before them. "It's impossible for it to have healed completely."

Duo's expression remained dark. No, it wasn't impossible, not for him.

Heero still stood by without participating. If the proceedings interested him, he didn't show it in the slightest.

"Surgery might have taken care of those scars as well." Trowa pointed out.

"But at least if he has scars, we can be more sure of who he is…" Quatre's logic failed him as he thought it over. He lifted his gaze and tried to catch Duo's eyes through the darkness that had overshadowed them, tried to tell him that he was trying his hardest to help, but all the light from within them seemed to have been stolen.

"_See? They have you now. These dangerous people that you call your friends might trust you for your talent and skill, but the moment that you begin to act differently, to take their advice and invest in some serous introspection, their inappropriate paranoia sets in._"

"_I thought I told you to shut _up_._"

The voice continued unheedingly. It was eerily similar to Duo's, yet infinitely different in its tone and inflections. "_We should escape now, while we still have a chance. Only Heero knows where Deathscythe is, and in any case, they won't be guarding it _all_ the time… We could do plenty of damage here before leaving as well-…_"

"_Fuck off. There is no way in hell that I'm pulling an escape like that here._"Even as Duo pushed away the notion, he had to agree that it was probably the best course of action, and that just for a moment, he had truly wanted to do just that.

"_You know it's what you want to do._"Damn.

Duo definitely looked afraid to the four pilots watching him. Trowa and Wufei had been slowly moving to flank him as the dark youth seemed preoccupied. Wufei, though secretly grateful that the baka hadn't bolted on them, was suddenly forced to wonder just what could be drawing Maxwell's attention away at this critical moment, and perhaps if it was the same thing that occasionally caused him to drop his guard on the battlefield.

Unable to truthfully deny his own thoughts, Duo instead lashed out against them with another point, in a vain hope that if he could disprove just one of Shinigami's assertions that his entire platform would crumble. "_And stop saying _'_you_'_ and _'_I_'_ and _'_me_' _like I'm schizophrenic or something! I do _not_ talk to myself-…_"

"_Actually, you often do, but that's not the point._"Shinigami's flippant tones, so similar to Duo's own teasing voice yet harboring a deadly malice that Duo would never dare voice, served more to disarm Duo's mind than the words that were actually said. After a moment of stunned silence where Duo wondered exactly where that came from, Shinigami apologized in a way that meant he wasn't sorry at all, "_Sorry, couldn't resist._"Then he laughed. "_No matter, you'll be begging for me to get you out of this situation soon enough. Look around._"

Duo's eyes went wide as he noticed Wufei and Trowa preparing to grab him, and for a moment, light reached his eyes and his heart shone through those amethyst depts. Quatre subconsciously lifted a loose fist up to his chest as he sympathetically felt the edge of Duo's shock and sudden fear.

"_How could I have missed that!?_"Duo barely had the time to think as he started and the two boys on either side of him lunged forward and arrested Duo's arms. He realized then with morbid humor that he truly had noticed, or must have for that snide voice to have told him with such triumph. Without thinking his actions through (as he would have done if he was on the battlefield) Duo struggled and tried to break out of the two stronger boys' hold by aiming a handy foot at Wufei's shin, but the stronger boy looped his own leg around Duo's and locked it in place. Duo was about to go for Trowa's next, but he hesitated as he questioned the move. That was all the time it took for the taller boy to lop his own powerful leg around Duo's and step closer, so he and Wufei had arrested his torso and shoulders as well. A powerful notion to use his head to knock against the two and stun them entered Duo's mind, but he fought it down and looked to each side. There was no way he was going to break away from Trowa and Wufei; Duo was the second physically weakest pilot next to Quatre. Even though Trowa was number three on that list, the built European could probably bench three Duo's and a card table, whereas Duo doubted that he could even lift two Trowas. Even if Duo tried to pull a move, Wufei would probably "unleash the Dragon" on his ass before he could even react. Even so, after the pilots got a good look at his back, the situation would probably take a nasty turn for the worse. Duo didn't want to hurt his comrades—no, his friends—but who knew if they would feel the same in a few moments?

"Quatre, get over here and take a look!" Wufei yelled irately, obviously not pleased about a number of things having to do with this situation and his own proximity to Maxwell. As Duo turned his head to glare at Wufei, he and Trowa forced him to bend forward a little to further arrest his movement, and make it easier for Quatre to lift the back of his jacket and shirt once he got there. Duo winced as the unexpected movement sent shock waves through the bones in his back.

Quatre hesitated when Duo lifted his face and looked ad him willingly, forcing the sparkle back into his eyes for just a moment. "Quatre, I'm all for doing a strip tease, just not in front of you guys. …And because these two obviously won't listen to me, could you please, please, please get them to let go? This is _really_ uncomfortable…" Duo even let a ghost of a laugh grace his voice, but that faded when Wufei next spoke.

"_Now_, Quatre. This was _your_ idea. I know of a few more painful methods of interrogation if you'd rather we take alternative measures." Wufei growled out. Duo frowned darkly for a moment, redirecting all of his anger uselessly at him as if it would somehow give Wufei a kick in the butt for him.

Quatre nodded and wrung his small hands as he slowly began to move with Heero in tow.

"Quatre, buddy," Duo's voice took on a more desperate tone, and his eyes were too large for the hollow grin he managed to paste on his face, "come on, this is embarrassing. Please don't do this. Quatre!"

"_You've already lost them. You're only making the situation worse._"

"_Shut up already!_""Quatre, come on, please? No, come on, seriously now. Come on, I promise I'll keep my stereo volume down, I'll even stop picking on Wufei all the time! Quatre, please, I'll leave Wufei's underwear alone, I'll even take the itching powder out of the back of the drawer-…"

"That was you!?" Wufei roared as he scratched his ass.

"…Er…" Duo declined to comment, though Wufei's grip on his arm became oppressively tight. "Please, come on, please, I'll do anything, just leave my back alone! Anything, Quatre, anything! I'll clean my room, I'll clean the kitchen too, I'll clean the whole house!" By this time, Quatre had stopped right behind Duo and could no longer look the ten in the eyes, though he knew that they were filled with desperation, just like his voice. "Quatre, no! Come on, now, I'm your friend!" Duo's voice was strained from shouting by the time that last word echoed through the house.

"Come on, Quatre. If he's a spy, he deserves much worse." Wufei hissed.

Duo pushed against him for that.

"_It's too late to argue with them! We can still escape if we go now!_"Shinigami yelled, and Duo's inhibition nearly burst apart with its force, but Duo's conviction held firm.

"_I _will_ escape some other way, and I'm _not_ shooting any of my friends to do it._"Duo stated resolutely.

"_Fine, then. Have it your way._"Shinigami told him without truly compromising. His voice echoed darkly, and the space it had come from suddenly felt woefully empty again.

With his darker desires locked away—or perhaps merely willfully dormant again—the resolution Duo had felt sank quickly into agonizing dread. He felt the back of his coat lift slightly as Quatre's fingers tentatively grasped it.

"…I'm sorry that I have to do this, Duo." Quatre's apology was truly heartfelt, and Duo realized suddenly that Quatre was perhaps just as torn about this as he was.

Duo hung his head in defeat. He couldn't bring himself to struggle anymore, not as he began to understand that the strained emotions, nervous tension, and looming sense of betrayal among the team was entirely his fault. The sad gravity of what was about to happen suddenly hit him like a two-ton punch in the gut, and he squeezed his eyes shut to keep the threat of tears back. Duo Maxwell never cried, never for himself. "…I forgive you." Duo whispered for Quatre's ears alone.

The cherubic youth pushed Duo's jacket and shirt up his unresisting form until the articles bunched at his armpits and just below his neck. Duo's back muscles shivered as the cloth brushed his sensitive wings through the thin layer of skin and the bandages he wore around his torso to appease the other boys. He randomly remembered Doctor Arwel telling him that his wings were so sensitive to various types of heat, cold, and pressure because of their need to sense subtle changes in air currents. Duo, too emotionally exhausted to care, generously forgot to curse her name.

Quatre's hands began their careful work on his bandages, and Duo, as starved for human contact as he was, might have enjoyed the gentle touch if it wasn't for the weight in his stomach that seemed to be slowly moving up his throat and threatening to close off his air supply. Quatre handled Duo's bandages as if the braided boy was an exquisite piece of glass, and was so focused on being careful that he didn't realize that there was nothing beneath the wrappings until he reached the very end of the clean linen and gauze.

Quatre gasped and took a step back. There were plenty of horrifying slash marks, bullet scars, and other painful-looking records of past injuries on Duo's sides and front, but where the worst scars should have been, nothing but immaculate, unmarked skin gleamed before Quatre's eyes. Curiously, but with no betrayal of the thoughts within visible on his face, Heero stepped forward and ran the backs of his index fingers up the soft muscle on either side of Duo's spine where the worst of the injury had been. Duo bit his lip and shivered at the pleasurable contact, but fought the feeling down and made an offhand mental note never to let anyone but Hilde do that.

It wouldn't have been far off the mark to say that all hell broke loose then. Heero turned away with a visible scowl on his face, Wufei and Trowa demanded to know what was going on. Duo sighed and whispered a quick apology and went heavily limp, forcing Trowa and Wufei to let go of him or be dragged to the floor. Once Duo had his hands free, he tore a gun out from the top of his braid, rolled back to free his legs, and came up next to Quatre, who shrieked. He promptly took the boy hostage, holding his arms behind Quatre's back with one arm and the gun to his head with the other.

"Nobody move!" Duo shouted at the stunned soldiers, his black short and jacket falling around his bare torso with a soft rustle even as a horrifying chill penetrated every cell in his body. Quatre whimpered at Duo's icy grasp, wondering how just moments before this boy had been so warm to the touch. "I swear I'll kill him if you move!" His voice spoke of a malice that was felt as well as heard, and each pilot was left with no doubt that Duo wouldn't hesitate to do just that. They couldn't even see his eyes under their heavy shadows, but they could see all his teeth as he frowned and bared them. "_Stupid boy._"Shinigami seethed. "_It's too late now, too late. The little Arab is the only thing keeping them from jumping me, and even that defense won't last long. Heero will take out his gun, or Trowa will pull a move, or Wufei might kick Quatre to knock me off balance. Even if they don't get a chance to do any of those, Quatre's shock will wear off soon, and he knows how to handle a hostage situation. I can assume that the others know the layout of the shrouds in this room as well as I do; Heero might know them even better. I could get halfway to the balcony before they regroup or I get in a confrontation. I could dispatch anyone but Heero without firing a shot. Even that won't slow him unless it's a vital shot. Any confrontation would draw the attention of the others. There is a 65% chance that at least one of them would die as a result of this plan, 15% of an even higher mortality rate. If I go for the door, my chance of escape as well as the survival rate would drop significantly. I have a 75% chance of success by jumping off the balcony and flying around the side. It's 90% likely that if anyone would be mortally wounded, it would have to be Heero. I have 2.5 seconds._"All this ran through Duo's mind in about one-tenth of a second. His head was swimming and there was a rushing sound in his ears. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion and miles away. He barely felt it as his body lurched back, dragging Quatre with him through the first curtain, then shoving Quatre back through that one as Duo advanced silently through the second.

"_Step silently, wait, watch, go, stop, start, listen, look, walk, run…_"His flight through the ghostly rippling sheets was all a blur. The pilots were hunting him exactly as they would an intelligent foe, which he most definitely was. Duo was halfway to the balcony before, exactly as predicted, Heero tore through the barely rippling sheet behind him, one arm outstretched and the other slowly aiming a gun, or at least it only seemed slow.

Duo whirled around so gracefully and quickly that it seemed for a moment that instead of him turning, the room had merely spun around him. His aim was level with Heero's chest, and his head was tilted so far down that, though Heero knew Duo was looking at him, he could only see the whites of his eyes as a stray ray of light was reflected into them.

Duo's index finger strained the trigger even as Heero's own trigger-happy fingers just began to put pressure on the firing mechanism of his gun. For the barest of instants, Heero felt a strange emotion tickle his insides; he couldn't even identify the fear that threatened to bore through his gut like the bullet in Duo's gun planned to do to his chest. His fingers suddenly refused to move, and Heero's eyes widened.

[End Chapter 7]


	8. Chapter 8: Escape into Captivity

Chapter 08 – Escape into Captivity

****

"Hug me! I'm Flarbo, the dancing purple penguin!"

_Ittalics_ denote thought, except in cases of emphasis and recap.

A.N.: If my formatting does funny things again on either FF.net or MM.org, I'm not going to bother to go back to change it. Sorry for any inconvenience. Go to mediaminer and search for SilentWillow920 for a version without formatting mistakes.

A.N. 2: And because I couldn't resist adding this one right away… Hey, how's that? Three new chapters in a week!

:::

Duo whirled around so gracefully and quickly that it seemed for a moment that instead of him turning, the room had merely spun around him. His aim was level with Heero's chest, and his head was tilted so far down that, though Heero knew Duo was looking at him, he could only see the whites of his eyes as a stray ray of light was reflected into them.

Duo's index finger strained the trigger even as Heero's own trigger-happy fingers just began to put pressure on the firing mechanism of his gun. For the barest of instants, Heero felt a strange emotion tickle his insides; he couldn't even identify the fear that threatened to bore through his gut like the bullet in Duo's gun planned to do to his chest. His fingers suddenly refused to move, and Heero's eyes widened.

So did Duo's. There was a sharp intake of breath as Duo's head snapped up and his fingers snapped out, releasing the gun. Duo's own glorious, sparkling amethyst eyes rushed out from beneath his crown of bangs and his shaking hands flew to his hair quicker than Heero's eyes could follow. The gun flew into the air as Duo's fingers, not yet fully unstuck from the handle, rushed away from it. Hoarsely, muffled from his sleeves, Duo shouted, "No!" at himself. His knees gave out and he hit the floor hard right before his gun did, and knelt there, shaking.

"_I almost killed Heero…_"Duo thought, shell shocked, unable to remove the sight of his gun leveled squarely with Heero's chest from his vision.

Shinigami sounded both exasperated and disappointed. "_He would have survived f they got him right to surgery. The recoil of that gun would have lifted the barrel so that the bullet would have struck his windpipe and probably lodged into his spine, or exited to either side. With immediate transfer to a hospital, I'd give him a 67% chance of survival. That boy really tends to beat the odds._"

"_No, it wouldn't have been enough. …And I still would have shot him, and then OZ would have found him at the hospital. I don't… I don't care if they try and torture me. I don't-want-Heero-to-die!_"

"_You're rambling. Of course you care if you're tortured. It's one of your greatest fears, right up there with silence, being alone, and banana pudding._"

"_I'm not afraid of banana pudding._"Duo knew what Shinigami was trying to do with that minor distraction. Shinigami's thoughts, after all, were his own.

"_You should be. Now get up. We still have half a second before Heero recovers._"

"_No. I'm done. I never wanted to even try to escape. You did that; you took advantage of me. Besides, I _am_ the one and only Duo. They can't prove otherwise anyway._"

"_Oh, how naïve you are! Take a look, take a good look. They already have, little boy._"

Heero, having already recovered from his shock, walked swiftly over with his gun trained on Duo's head, kicked Duo's gun out of reach, and pressed the short barrel of his handgun to Duo's temple. "Stay there."

"_You've never talked to me this much before._"Duo absently noted, ignoring Heero. He didn't plan on moving much for a while anyway.

Shinigami didn't answer.

"_I don't like it. I don't want my friends to meet you, or even see a hint of you unless we're fighting OZ._"

Still, Shinigami was silent.

"_…So just… go away. We're done here._"

Seeming to agree with him, the place where Shinigami had been became empty once more.

The other pilots burst through the curtains and into the small space. Duo's hands were still shaking as he released his hair and slowly lowered them, open and empty onto his lap. Most of the darkness had left him, but his hands still ached with cold. He tried to rub them together, but they were shaking too hard, so he just put them back onto his lap. "Quatre… I'm… I'm sorry." He stuttered, and his voice came out as a whisper.

"Imposter!" Wufei cuffed him on the back of the head. "How dare you speak to Quatre like that!? It's injustice! Where is your honor!?"

"I'm sorry, Wufei." Duo whispered, and his voice squeaked to life toward the end.

"Don't say things that you don't mean." Trowa glared at him.

"Hn." Heero said, though no one knew what he meant by it.

"I'm sorry Trowa, Heero, especially Heero. I almost messed up big time-… no, I did mess up big time-…"

Wufei smacked him again. "How _dare_ you!?" His face took on a deep red hue. He was truly angry, on the verge of violence. He drew his hand back to cuff Duo once more, but Quatre stopped him.

"That won't help." He merely said.

"So what will you do with me now? I'm done fighting, but I would like to know." Duo's voice was low. "Will you, 'foresake' me," the other pilots gained a distinct impression that he had quoted someone that he greatly disliked, "…or kill me? Or maybe whip out the banana pudding?" The four were confused by that last part, but Duo seemed to find it funny.

"What is he rambling on about now?" Trowa asked irately.

"We won't do any of those." Quatre answered Duo. "…But we do need to secure you somewhere and remove your weapons… at least until we know who you are, and where Duo is. Trowa? Wufei? We need to knock down some of these sheets and tie him to one of the support poles. We'll discuss our next course of action over dinner. Wufei, you secure his legs. Trowa, could you go and get some strong rope? Heero, I need you to secure his arms and help Wufei carry him. I don't want him to try anything. I'll clear the way."

When Quatre had already started off an Heero and Wufei had Duo in their hold, the dark youth spoke in a low voice to Heero, just for the sake of hearing someone speak. "You believe me, right Hee-buddy?" he asked without real hope.

"Hn." Heero replied.

"Thought not." Duo wasn't disappointed, because he hadn't expected anything.

"I never said that."

"W-What!?" Duo sputtered.

"Keep it down back there!" Wufei snapped.

"I know you're not a spy," Heero told Duo once Wufei took his attention off them. "Still, I can't allow you to escape until the others realize the same." He spoke coldly, without a hint of emotion to betray what he was thinking.

"But why? How?" Duo asked quietly.

Heero was obviously in a compliant mood, because he answered, "You're the only soldier I've seen with such strange features… and mannerisms. They would be difficult if not impossible to replicate." Just then, he and Wufei set Duo down roughly. As Wufei held Duo against the thick pole (unnecessarily, he wasn't struggling), Heero tightened a complex knot around Duo's wrists and secured him to the pole. Just before standing, Heero yanked the knot one last time to make sure it was secure.

"Ow! Hey, watch it!" Duo yelled.

Heero yanked the rope again. "You won't escape, not while I can stop you."

"Gee, take things personally much?" Duo said sarcastically.

Heero didn't acknowledge him. "You will stay here until you are questioned. If indeed you are found to be a spy, you will be shown no mercy."

"A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend." Duo quipped.

Trowa glared at him. "Exactly _what_ we decide to do, you will discover soon enough."

Duo, usually quite the patient one, rolled his eyes and glared right back at Trowa. His eyes didn't contain the same darkness that they had before, and Trowa, who had absently wondered about those brilliant amethyst orbs so many times before, had quite a time convincing himself that it wasn't Duo staring right back into his eyes.

Trowa turned and walked away.

"I'm hungry." Duo spoke clearly and with contempt at the teen's retreating back.

Heero joined Trowa. Wufei did too a moment later, but not before glancing at Quatre, who seemed lost and confused. "Quatre." Wufei softly called the youth's attention. Quatre turned his head toward Wufei, then joined him.

Duo's gaze softened as if his muscles no longer had the strength to hold a glare. He gave a defeated sigh, then rested against his bonds. Duo lightly closed his eyes and whispered into the darkness behind his eyelids, "…and cold."

:::

Trowa, Quatre, and Wufei had a fight over bringing Duo meals only minutes later when Trowa had discovered Quatre preparing an extra portion after he had already served the four. Wufei was unwittingly dragged into it and exchanged sharp words with both sides. Trowa didn't want the "imposter" fed at all, and argued that lack of food would make him talk easier. Duo, personally well acquainted with various methods of torture, had to admit to himself that if they were really talking about an OZ soldier, or anyone besides him, that this tactic might actually work. Yet for street savvy Duo, hunger was a minor annoyance that he had grown up side-by-side with. Quatre reminded Trowa that they were still civilized people, and despite the odds and evidence against him, it was still possible that their prisoner was none other than Duo Maxwell himself. Wufei argued with both sides and in the end just wound up stomping off to his room and slamming the door.

Duo found that amusing but didn't dare draw attention to himself by laughing. The fact that he had been starving for most of his young life made him nearly immune to the pangs of hunger, but it was also one of the main reasons that he liked to eat as much as he could whenever he could manage it.

After all was said and done, however, Quatre brought a tray of food over to Duo, who smirked with good natured amusement, but only good natured because Quatre was the one to bring it. "So, you whipped out the banana pudding after all."

One side of Quatre's mouth lifted involuntarily before he frowned again and lifted the ham sandwich from the plate to Duo's mouth.

Duo obligingly took a big bite out of it, but was careful to avoid Quatre's fingers. He had thought of a hundred things to say to the "Q-ball", but suddenly couldn't force a single one of them to his throat.

Quatre turned his face away, unwilling to look Duo in the eyes. His resolve was already dangerously close to failing. Untying Duo's hands looked like a very good idea right now, far preferable to waiting here while Duo—or someone who looked so much like him—was so close that Quatre could heel his slow, even breath. How could he be so calm while Quatre felt like his heart was being torn open and assaulted from every direction? There was tension, anger, fear, sadness, hopelessness, regret…

"I'm sorry." Quatre whispered, then noticed momentarily that his other hand had again crept up of its own accord to clutch at his chest. He slowly forced it back to the floor, but felt suddenly exposed having done so.

Duo swallowed. "I already forgave you. I don't blame you for your reaction." He whispered back. He almost added, "I half expected it anyway," but didn't, and instead just ate more of his ham sandwich. He felt strangely better now that he was sure that Quatre had heard him, but was rightly sure that it only made Quatre feel worse.

There was silence between them for a long time, during which Duo spent a lot of time studying the banana pudding and the spoon in its little plastic bowl. He slowly began to realize that Shinigami was right—again—and that somehow the obviously fake, almost fluorescent yellow of the sugary, falsely flavored treat annoyed him. It reminded him first of all of Quatre's golden hair, a bright, pure color that Duo knew would just shine before his eyes if only he dared to look up, but he didn't. Then it reminded him of this false peace and formality between them, and that started to make him sick. By the time he was done with his sandwich, he was choking it down. It was strange for something as simple as pudding to spark such deep introspection in him. Furthermore, it reminded Duo of his own layers of pretense and phoniness, and provided a strange insight, that his basks had been so perfect that when one began to crack, his fellow pilots no longer recognized him. As he shifted and felt his extra appendages shift inside him, he thought that perhaps they were right to think that he no longer was himself. After all, he was no longer human…

"_No, that's not right. I never was in the first place. Heh, just one more layer of irony to coat my fucked up life with…_"

Quatre slowly lifted the bowl of banana pudding and raised a jiggling spoonful of it to Duo's lips.

Duo turned his head away and sighed. "…I'm sorry, Quatre. I'm sure it tastes wonderful and all, but I'm not feeling all that great at the moment. Thanks for the sandwich, though."

The cherubic youth was surprisingly not very startled at Duo's quiet, tired tone of voice. He stood wordlessly and left Duo to suffer at a torture worse than that of lack of food.

"_I don't think I'll ever look at banana pudding the same way again._"

"_Told you,_"said a woefully familiar voice. Duo mentally groaned.

:::

Blood glistened in the moonlight that was streaming through the windows late that night. It was Trowa's shift to watch Duo, and it was nearly midnight. About two hours ago, Duo had begun to shudder and quiver, though it seemed like much longer than that. Duo had planned to escape near the middle or end of Trowa's shift.

"_It was a really bad idea to try this. I knew I shouldn't have waited this long…_"Duo thought.

"_No, I knew. You seemed pretty keen on charging right ahead all gung-ho, though. Perhaps you've forgotten what that crazy doctor said about ten hours. It's already been eight._"

"_Just shut up. You're not helping._"

"_Don't get your balls in a twist now. I _would_ be helping if you'd let me, but noooo. You have to think of a plan yourself. You won't let me do anything because you're afraid that someone will get hurt if you do—heaven forbid that that person is anyone but yourself, you glory hog._"

"_Shut up and let me think. I'd be out of this already if you would._"

"_All you want to do is play the hero, because you know you'll never get a chance to, not while you still have to rely on me just to survive._"

"_I said shut up! I don't need this right no-…w…_"Duo choked, coughed, and his body shook in a convulsion as white hot pain lanced through his back. He tried his best to stifle it, but the pressure wouldn't let him hold his breath properly.

"Stop that. You aren't fooling anyone." Trowa said lowly.

"_He's the fool._"Shinigami hissed.

Duo laughed darkly. "'Wish it was a joke, buddy." Then he winced as he heard something pop, and a fresh, hot, sticky trickle of blood made its way down his back and to the floor. Duo vaguely realized that he must look like something out of a horror movie, and was suddenly glad that Trowa didn't seem to notice in the dim light.

"_You can't keep your wings in much longer. If you're going to escape, it has to be now._"Shinigami told him flatly, objectively.

Duo growled out loud in frustration. "_I know that!_"

"I told you to stop that, imposter. I won't fall for your tricks. It's almost Wufei's shift. If you don't stop struggling, I might not make an effort to convince him that you should stay in one piece." Even though Trowa's voice was usually almost as monotonous as Heero's, Duo could detect the blatant malice in his statement.

The dark youth growled one last time before sighing as he relaxed. A change came over him, almost imperceptible, but a change nonetheless. "Sorry about this, Tro'." He apologized, but it didn't sound like an apology. The statement was malicious, almost caressing, as if something truly enjoyable was about to happen and Shinigami only observed the formalities for the sake of his relationship with Duo.

"_Don't hurt him badly._"Duo pleaded one last time in his mind.

"_Oh, you're no fun._"

Trowa scoffed. "So, you've finally decided to drop the act. You're sorry for what? Getting caught? Then again, I suppose you truly will be sorry once Wufei's shift comes around."

Shinigami laughed lowly and grinned a grin that glittered in the pale light. It wasn't a nice grin. "Yes, it seems I have dropped the act. Then again, you would know all about _acting_, dear clown."

Trowa shifted uncomfortably. Somehow he much preferred it when the boy had been acting like Duo.

Shinigami laughed lowly, shaking his head.

"_Stop it, Shinigami. I don't want him to meet you._"

"_It seems he already has…_"Shinigami's laugh grew in malice.

"_That's enough. Just get out of here like you said you would._"

"_You never let me have any fun._"he pouted.

"_For a good reason._"

"_I suppose logic, after all, is the soul of wit, not of wisdom. That's why wit is funny._"Shinigami suddenly became contemplative. "_Then again, you might have been better off if it had happened to be the other way around._"Satisfied with Duo's silence, Shinigami returned to the task at hand.

He hissed and winced as his claws pierced his raw skin and slit through his favorite leather jacket like hot knives through butter. His voice became hoarse and strained as he fought to keep his wings from exploding through the skin. "…Sorry…" he winced, "…for what…" he hissed. "Nng! …I'm about…" He gasped, then sighed as the ropes binding him fell away courtesy of those gloriously sharp claws, "…to do to you."

"What? What are you about to…?" Trowa turned to face Duo fully and found him standing stiffly, if shakily, with a shallow pool of blood swirling beneath him as more dripped from his body. Trowa's eyes went wide. "What!? How?"

Duo was thankful that even when shouting, Trowa's voice never carried far. Shinigami's grin became a grimace for a few short moments as his wings began to shift and he fought fiercely to keep them in. The pain was maddening, but then again Duo never claimed his alter ego to be his saner side, and Shinigami could handle far more pain than Duo's conscious mind could anyway.

The distance between Trowa and the dark youth closed quickly, and before Trowa could aim his gun properly, Shinigami delivered a powerful kick to his gut, and then a vicious uppercut once Trowa had been knocked off balance.

"_Your turn._"Shinigami said flippantly as Trowa's unconscious form fell and the aftershock of his movement began to catch up to him.

"_Bastard!_"Duo mentally yelled as he slid to his hands and knees, gasping shallowly. He felt almost ready to throw up as his mouth widened in a silent scream and his wings finally exploded from his back in a giant mess. Duo collapsed. "_Why… the hell… did I wait so long._"He thought at length.

"_You tell me._"Shinigami replied.

"_It was a rhetorical question._"

"_Ah, rhetorical questions, rhetorical questions, where would we be without rhetorical questions?_"

Duo couldn't prevent the smirk that widened across his tired lips, or the giggle that began in his throat as the specialized organ in his back was already busily closing his gaping wounds.

"Now_ you laugh at my jokes._"Shinigami pretended to be hurt.

"_I always do. They're mine too, you know._"There was no hostility in Duo's inner voice anymore.

"_Heh, I suppose._"

Duo slowly brought his chilled hands to his lips and breathed into them then rubbed them, but as always it didn't help. "_It would be a good idea to leave about now._"Duo spoke into the silence.

Shinigami didn't respond. Duo knew he was still just below the surface, however.

It only took a few seconds before Duo was sure that his back was healed. Out of exhaustion more than anything else, he kept his eyes loosely closed as he pushed himself up and onto his back. He was still smiling and the trailing edge of a laugh still tickled his throat.

He heard a click about four inches in front of his face and opened his eyes to see the barrel of a gun pointed firmly between them. The gun's owner slowly came into view as Duo's eyes focused. Duo's laugh was still fading as he asked, "He-… Heero?"

"Hn." Heero replied in the affirmative. Actually, for all Duo could tell from the lack of range of inflection in his voice, Heero could have meant anything from "no" to "Hug me! I'm Flarbo, the dancing purple penguin!" but he guessed that Heero meant, "yes". After all, Duo couldn't imagine Heero accepting hugs, much less dancing in a purple penguin suit.

Then again, perhaps that wasn't the best thing to be pondering with Heero practically picking Duo's nose with a handgun. "Woah, Heero!" Duo panicked and pushed himself up into a sitting position, but over balanced and flared his wings to steady himself. He realized his mistake only a moment later as Heero's eyes flicked to the side and narrowed when they returned to Duo's open, shocked face. "I… uh… woah… It's not what it looks like, er…" Duo pushed himself back, but a surge of adrenaline coursed through his veins as he bumped against the wall.

Heero followed, keeping his gun trained on Duo's head.

"Hee-… Heero, you're not really going to shoot me, are you?" His mind was racing, and he felt more than heard Shinigami already planning the best escape route and calculating the odds of injury and mortality. Any way they added up, they were in Heero's favor.

"Hn." Heero responded helpfully.

Duo tried his best to hide his wings behind his back to keep them out of view.

"Don't bother."

"…What?" Duo asked.

"Don't bother hiding them. I've already seen. Now move to the pole and I'll tie you up. Tomorrow morning, you'll explain everything to the other pilots. I lack sufficient information to explain it myself."

Duo's breathing quickened. "Wait a second… You knew? How?"

Heero only stiffened his gun arm in response and grunted, "Hn."

"How long have you known?" Du continued his questioning as he slowly stood, keeping his hands in Heero's view so as to minimize potential provocation of Heero's soldier instincts. This was stage one of his escape plan: instill a false sense of security in his captor.

"Apparently I suspected long before you fount out. Violet eyes are difficult to miss. I've known for sure since this afternoon."

"Feeling cooperative tonight, huh, Hee-buddy?" Duo quipped sardonically. Stage two: shock and disrupt.

Heero's lips drew into a thin line. "Move now, Duo."

"_And here's stage three._"This would be the most difficult part of his whole plan, for it set up the next part, upon which the entirety of his success depended. Still, what Heero had told him threatened to twist his voice with anger. How dare he keep something like that from him!? How dare he act so uncaring, so cold….

"_Focus, Duo._"Shinigami reminded him. "_Focus, or I'll take over from here._"

"_…Fine, go ahead. Just don't hurt him too badly._"

"_Technically, if he was eradicated from the known universe, he would be forevermore protected from any type of harm…_"

"_Shinigami…_"

"_All right, all right…_"

Shinigami took over, but Duo's face didn't change this time, only the inflections in his voice. "Sorry, buddy, can't do that." He did a little dance with his hands, which further focused Heero on them and confused him at the same time. "_Good._"Shinigami thought as he watched Heero's eyes. "_Stage four: attack._"He flashed one of his wings outward to distract Heero to one side, then dodged to the other.

"K'so." Heero hissed as he realized his mistake. He fires his gun and grazed the forearm of Duo's outstretched wing. The deafening blast shattered the fragile silence of the house as the bloodstained white feathers flew into the air.

Shinigami hardly even felt it. He came up on Heero's blind side and surrounded the boy with his stifling wings. He pressed one claw to his throat, hoping to stop Heero's movement, but Heero followed Duo with his gun and fired again into the same wing. This time the bullet passed through the muscle and grazed the bone. Shinigami jerked to the side and sliced open Heero's shoulder as he passed, then used his good wing to pummel Heero over the head, and one arm to smack his bleeding shoulder. Heero saw spots and was knocked off balance, then struck the floor.

"_Odds of escape are now up to 75%._"Shinigami thought quickly. He turned and ran for the balcony, occasionally using both his good and wounded wing to give him a boost in speed and glide over the sheets that were hung all over the room.

Just as he was descending toward the glass door, a bullet flitted between his feathers only inches to the left of his chest and ricocheted off the metal window frame. "_He was really trying to hit me._"Duo realized as he opened the door, then quickly flew off the balcony. The pain of his bullet wounds caught up to him as he caught the air, and he winced. Shinigami had become dormant again, leaving him to "enjoy" the experience. "_Bastard._"Duo mentally grumbled.

"_Gee, I never knew you were._"Shinigami taunted him.

Duo nearly called him a bastard again, but just scoffed, "_Tch,_"and concentrated on what he planned to do now.

Wufei and Quatre had awoken at the sound of the first shot, and came running at the second. "Heero!" Quatre called as he spotted the boy on the floor, his gun still trained on the window.

Wufei was the first to arrive at Heero's side and notice the boy holding his bloody, sliced shoulder. "What happened? Did he pull a knife on you? Is Trowa all right?" There was so much blood on the floor.

As Quatre descended the steps, he spotted Trowa's limp form on the ground near a large puddle of blood and gasped. He willed his feet to move faster and almost tripped down the stairs. He checked Trowa's pulse when he got to the boy's side and found it steady and strong. Quatre couldn't find a single injury except for a dark patch of skin under his jaw that looked like the beginning of a bruise. "Trowa's just fine." He said incredulously.

"Hn." Heero confirmed. "Unconscious. Most of the blood isn't ours."

"What did you do to the boy, Heero!?" Quatre asked, startled by this revelation.

"Shot him." Heero replied nonchalantly.

"Heero!" Quatre yelled.

"He's alive." Heero reassured him.

Quatre calmed down, but only slightly. Wufei didn't. "He escaped!? Yuy, how could you let him!? It's injustice, it's-…!"

"There were unseen complications." Heero told Wufei. He didn't elaborate. The stoic boy grunted as he stood, holding his sliced shoulder. The wound was clean cut and seemed almost surgical in its precision, but it was deep. He would need to close it before they left.

"He could be on his way back to OZ by now!" Wufei shouted.

"Relax." Heero told Wufei firmly as Trowa began to stir. "I have a good idea where he's going."

[End Chapter 8]


End file.
